

Class 


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Book. S) 

Copyright N?._ SL 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 














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He imagined himself made nder of a great province. 


1 | — 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


By MAY STRANATHAN 

M 


with illustrations by 
ETHEL C. TAYLOR 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
1921 



COPYRIGHT, 1921 , 

BY 

Moffat, Yard & Company. 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 

FEB 20 (923 


©CU696810 

j 


My Aunt Lena 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


Most of the stories in this book have appeared 
in THE AMERICAN BOY, THE IN- 
TERIOR, THE NATIONAL STOCKMAN 
AND FARMER, THE PITTSBURGH DIS- 
PATCH, THE PITTSBURGH GAZETTE 
TIMES and THE NATIONAL MAGA- 
ZINE. The thanks of the author is extended to 
the editors of these publications for permission 
to reprint in this edition. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Crazy Elephant 3 

Inversion of Fractions 17 

Zenobia 29 

Consuelo 45 

Tiglath Pileser 59 

Harrie 71 

The Growth of Atheism 87 

The Political Pawn 101 

The Missing Link 117 

The Decline of Chivalry 137 

The Sarahsville Fair 149 

George’s Spiritual Gift 161 

The Seeds of Disillusion 179 

The Finish 191 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

He imagined himself made ruler of a great province Frontispiece 

PAGE 

He held Dan Gusky high above his head 1 1 

He threw dignity to the winds and set out in pursuit of the 

doll 31 

Accustomed to aid her exit from his presence with his foot . 47 

He rose to his feet and listened 63 

Living like the lilies of the field 75 

Painted Indians riding along the brow of the hill ... 91 

“I want to be a political pawn !” 105 

He needs must have sprung from his bed 123 

Miss Gregg had said Samuel was a chivalrous little boy . 141 

He could only stare in dumb wonder at the magnificence of 

the display 153 

It swelled into a fat pig with pink paper ears . . . . 171 
Perhaps a Johnny Stewart will come only once in a lifetime 183 
How many times had he dreamed those dreams! . . . 195 



THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 





SILHOUETTE STORIES 


THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 

T HE crazy elephant, Methuselah, stood in all his 
craziness, with his eyes almost shut, and took 
no notice of little Dan Gusky. But, for that matter, 
Dan Gusky just now took no notice of the crazy ele- 
phant, but stood with his back to him and watched 
the mother monkey feeding her children with the 
gleanings of their toilets. 

Dan was visiting his uncle in the city and had been 
brought by him to see the wonders of Sunrise Park; 
first the museum and conservatory, in which places 
he was amazed that so much grandeur should be dis- 
played free of charge, and wondered at the lack of 
thrift in the millionaire who had given the park to 
the city. 

“Why, it’s worth five dollars to see all these 
things,” said he as he stood before a row of jars full 
of pickled snakes, “if I owned this place every person 
who got in here would have to pay a dollar anyway.” 

Lastly they had visited the animals in their winter 
quarters, where was kept, resting from a tiresome sea- 
3 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


son of theater engagements, the celebrated man eat- 
ing lion, Nebuchadnezzar. 

Dan Gusky had not definitely expected to see the 
great Man Eater in the act of performing a feat sim- 
ilar to those which had made his fame, nor that he 
would have enjoyed such a sight; but a lion, even 
though he be large and ferocious looking, lying half 
asleep in his cage, must be a disappointment to a 
boy whose mind has been filled with horrifying pic- 
tures of him doing his name full justice. Especially 
a boy from the country, where a bull, fondly imag- 
ined to be cross, was the nearest approach to a beast 
of prey. So after a while Dan got tired looking at 
the Man Eater and turned his attention to the mon- 
keys. 

Dan and his uncle were the best of friends, but 
their affection was of that all too common kind which 
thrives best if the friends are not too much together; 
and the uncle had bethought himself that, after giv- 
ing up nearly the whole day to his nephew’s amuse- 
ment, it would be nothing more than right that he 
should gratify his own tastes for a little, while the 
boy was happy and good in this Eden spot with the 
animals. 

Accordingly, asking the man in charge of the ani- 
mal quarters to keep an eye on Dan for a little while, 
and paying him half a dollar in advance, the uncle 
had gone back to the museum to study the new In- 
4 


THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 


dian relics there, and discuss with Professor Gluck 
how many thousand years old they might be and the 
resemblance they bore to ancient Egyptian art. 

Presently Dan went back to the cage of the Man 
Eater to see if he had livened up any; but the lion 
was still with his eyes half closed. But, neverthe- 
less, he saw every move Dan made. 

So, the boy left him and went over and looked 
at the crazy elephant, who stood with one leg chained 
to the ground. 

Not that Methuselah was a noisy, raving brute, 
foaming at the mouth and rolling his eyes in a fine 
frenzy. He was simply stupid and would not walk 
on his hind legs or roll a barrel any more. It had 
not been always thus with him, for he had come to 
Sunrise Park years before with letters of high recom- 
mendation as an elephant of remarkable intelligence, 
the truth of which testimony his life had exempli- 
fied ; and he had been given a station of honor on the 
top of a hill for his first summer at the park. 

As a tropical animal, he was supposed to simply 
revel in heat, so he was left at his post, with the July 
sun beating down relentlessly on him during days 
so hot that the honey comb melted down and 
drowned the bees in the honey, and the little fish 
came to the top of the water and gasped and died. 
And Methuselah remembered, as the dim dream of 
5 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


a long lost paradise, the sheltering leaves and the 
cooling waters of his native African forests. 

After that he seemed to lose his interest in life, 
even taking no notice of the boys who offered him 
peanuts; and was an awful example of the failure 
of the higher education of elephants. He was quiet 
and docile but had forgotten all his tricks and no 
longer appreciated the benefits he enjoyed by living 
in a civilized country. 

For a while Dan looked pensively at the crazy ele- 
phant, wondering if he were alive or stuffed with 
sawdust. Finally he looked all around the big room, 
but the man who had its contents in charge was no- 
where to be seen. Then the boy took a pin from 
his jacket, and cautiously nearing the elephant from 
behind, began to try if it could feel a prick on the 
leg. Just as Dan had grown bolder, beginning to 
think the elephant an astonishingly good imitation, 
and pushed the pin in farther, the crazy elephant 
began to move its head from side to side in a most 
melancholy way. Dan jumped back, and gradually 
the elephant let the cat die. 

But an elephant wagging its head is more inter- 
esting than one doing nothing at all; so Dan again 
put in the pin, and again the crazy elephant expressed 
his disapproval, his head moving the faster, the far- 
ther in the pin went. But that was the utmost Dan 
could get him to do; so presently he grew tired of 
6 


THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 


the sameness of the entertainment, and went back 
once more to the monkeys, who were eternally in- 
teresting. And the crazy elephant brooded alone in 
peace, his head still slowly swaying a mild protest. 

Perhaps his mind had become only a memory, and 
he was now sadly thinking of the years long ago, 
when he roamed at his will through mighty forests 
at the head of his herd — he their leader by reason 
of his great size and his sagacity, which had been 
recognized by his own kind even before he had been 
taught of man. He gazed across at the Man Eater 
in his cage opposite and wondered how he liked the 
change. The Man Eater had got up noiselessly and 
walked stealthily to the door of his cage. He knew 
that it had not been fastened since his keeper had put 
in the water that morning. This man, although not 
of the type usually pictured as suffering much from 
love’s pangs, was, nevertheless, its victim, — by rea- 
son of a young woman who stuffed animals in the 
workshop beneath the museum, and who was prone 
to keep other company than his. And so Melan- 
choly had marked the keeper of the Man Eater for 
her own, and Absentmindedness also claimed of him 
a generous share. Thus it was that the door of the 
lion’s cage was shut but the padlocked chain that 
held it was only in part where it should be. 

When the Man Eater awoke from his sleep at the 
other end of his cage, and saw at once the state of 
7 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


affairs, he had too much politeness to call attention 
to the fact that all was not as it should be. Neither 
had he made any attempt to get out, for he had been 
bounteously fed; and besides, he had a measure of 
respect for his keeper, since he always carried a 
crooked stick from which flew out balls of fire that 
drew blood where they hit as surely as did the lion’s 
teeth — such balls as had once struck the lion’s leg. 

But now, it was nearing the time for the evening 
meal, and the keeper had gone away and left a little 
boy there alone, who was now standing with his back 
to the lion’s cage, looking at those idiot monkeys op- 
posite, and with nothing between him and the Man 
Eater except the crazy elephant, who observed noth- 
ing. So the lion quietly pushed open the door with 
his nose, and walked out unobtrusively and with de- 
corum. 

But Methuselah had not yet recovered his usual 
stupidity since his arousing by the pin in the hand 
of Dan, and he took notice of this new departure on 
the part of the Man Eater. 

The lion’s eyes were fixed on the boy and he 
crouched ready to spring. 

Then suddenly the crazy elephant raised up his 
long desponding head and broke the silence that had 
so long been his portion. And it was with no toy 
sound he made known his pent up feelings but with 
such a mighty blast of his great trumpet as amazed 
8 


THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 


even the Man Eater, and made little Dan Gusky 
think that the end of the world had surely come. It 
was such a sound as the lion had heard long years ago 
in the forest as the leader of the herd warned a 
mother elephant of the peril of her baby, and for a 
moment he hesitated. 

Perhaps the red hair of Dan reminded Methuse- 
lah of the little red-fezzed son of the man who had 
been his first master and who had sold him into the 
bondage of civilization. This little boy had been 
kind to him and had petted him and ridden him with 
joy and pride and had cried when his father sold 
his friend away. But he was only about one-third 
civilized. 

Or it may have been that, while yet a baby ele- 
phant, toddling at his mother’s side, he had learned 
the lesson of repaying good for evil. 

Be this as it may, when he had given his warning 
note of danger, and while the Man Eater hesitated 
and was lost, the crazy elephant reached out with his 
trunk and picked up the one who had so lately per- 
secuted him with pins, and raised him high in the 
air. Then he turned squarely to the Man Eater, with 
his tusks, long, sharp and powerful, extended. 

For an awful instant the Man Eater glared at 
Methuselah, then he sprang, making for the poor 
little bone of contention in the elephant’s trunk. 

Then one long forgotten trick of Methuselah’s 
9 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


came back to him; and rearing himself on his hind 
legs, he caught the king of beasts like a kitten on 
his tusks and tossed him thirty feet away to the other 
end of the room. 

This was more than the dignity of the Man Eater 
could stand, and he came on again, his eyes gleaming 
yellow fire and his tawny mane bristling. 

But the blood of the old elephant was up and he 
remembered a thing or two more. There had been 
a time in the life of Methuselah which he had tried 
all his after years to forget; a time when bitterness 
and turbulence filled his soul — a time of solitary 
wandering; after he had left his herd in a fit of ca- 
priciousness and envy and had never been permitted 
to rejoin it; when his acquaintance was cut by every 
other one of the elephant kind; and when this injus- 
tice and his loneliness and remorse had wrought in 
him such rage and fury that he had roamed a vicious 
rogue, attacking everything that came in his way. , 

After he had been captured and the kindness and 
affection of the sheik’s little son had gradually 
brought him to himself, his had been a deep and sin- 
cere repentance, and his after woe he had accepted 
resignedly as a just punishment for the crimes he 
had committed while in a state of sin. And he had 
come to believe that at last, through the fiery trials 
of civilization, he had made full expiation. But, 
like the bird with the broken pinion, the crazy ele- 
io 



He held Dan Gusky high above his head. 


II 



THE CRAZY ELEPHANT 


phant could never be afterward exactly like he was 
before he had lived the life of a rogue. The fight- 
ing blood was still in him, though he had known it 
not; and when he saw that the lion meant fight, a 
spirit of rage took possession of him, and his years 
of rectitude dropped off like a rag. 

He was a transformed elephant. He raised his 
bound foot and the rusty chain that had sufficed to 
hold him in his docility, snapped asunder. His eyes 
gleamed fury and his tusks beat the air. And all the 
time he held Dan Gusky high above his head and 
kept both him and his own trunk out of the reach 
of the Man Eater. 

Perhaps when he faced the lion fully, he recog- 
nized for the first time the cause of all his darkened 
life. Who knows but that long years ago the lion 
had done to him and his some irreparable wrong— 
a wrong unknown to the lives of men — one which had 
driven Methuselah to be a Cain among elephants? 
And in his heart perhaps had burned ever since the 
desire for vengeance, and perhaps he had never since 
ceased to look for the destroyer of his peace; and 
when now they stood glaring into each other’s eyes 
the enemies recognized each other, and the villain 
and his former victim at last stood face to face. 

However this may have been, there followed a 
combat, swift, terrible and deadly— a battle of tusks 
against teeth and claws ; and when it was over, the 
13 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


great Nebuchadnezzar lay still in a heap on the 
ground, with the inside part of him hopelessly mixed 
with the outside; and if the crazy elephant had any 
ancient wrongs they were avenged. 

With the going out of the life of the Man Eater, 
the evil spirit went out of Methuselah, and he 
reached over very carefully and placed Dan on the 
floor beyond the remains of the foe. And without 
even stopping to thank his deliverer the boy ran 
from the building as fast as his trembling little legs 
could carry him, his face looking like a piece of 
white goods polka dotted in terra cotta, by reason 
of his freckles. 

In truth, Dan did not realize the fact that he owed 
his life to Methuselah, but ever after was accustomed 
to tell how he had, unaided and with marvelous 
bravery, escaped from both a man-eating lion and a 
crazy elephant. And the next day when his mother 
was hurrying him away from the heathenish city 
where all kinds of ravenous beasts thronged the pub- 
lic buildings, seeking whom they could devour, he 
had so far recovered from his fright that he looked 
wistfully out of the car window and said he would 
like to have stayed one more day and gone to the 
penitentiary. 




INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


B ENJAMIN DOAN SIMONS, alias Beady, 
sat in his seat at school in great distress of mind, 
his elbows on his desk, his brow — wrinkled with 
woe — resting on his dirty hands, and his eyes fixed 
in mute misery on his arithmetic. This book was 
an unerring barometer of Beady’s mental pressure, 
its dirty torn pages marking the scenes of mighty 
struggles when he passed over extra rough spots in 
his pathway up the hill of knowledge. 

The book was open at the division of fractions, 
and its owner was reading over and over a rule set 
down for the guidance of the bewildered wanderer 
in a maze of problems: “Invert the divisor and 
proceed as in multiplication.” Following this sim- 
ple rule were 23 inquiries concerning persons who 
bought and sold all manner of things in the most out- 
landish quantities and left their bills to be footed up 
by other people; or, perhaps, they were about ec- 
centric dead men who had left their estates to be di- 
vided in a way calculated to make the lawyers earn 
their money. 

An hour remained before recitation in which 
Beady was expected to solve all these questions. He 
17 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


hadn’t been able to make any of them out yet, be- 
cause he did not know how to go about them. Look- 
ing around the room he saw others of his class work- 
ing away stoically on their slates. Beady carefully 
wrote down the numbers of the first problem and 
stared at them a long while. Then he rubbed them 
out and wrote down the numbers of the second, care- 
fully scrutinizing them. Then, slowly, and as one 
who has left all hope behind, he again wet his fin- 
gers and rubbed out the second relay of figures also. 

The cause of all this agony was the fact that he 
did not know the meaning of the word “invert” and 
he was too proud to ask. He stared hard at the 
word, which grew more foreign to him every mo- 
ment, until at last the writing on the Rosetta stone 
would have seemed familiar beside it. And all the 
time the other pupils were working away as if they 
understood it thoroughly. It seemed to him that 
he would rather die than humiliate himself to ask 
the meaning of so small a word. 

Fifteen minutes passed and Beady began to watch 
the clock like a condemned criminal. Then sud- 
denly a joyous thought struck him. He would ask 
permission to look at the big dictionary that lay on 
the little table before the teacher’s desk. No one 
would know what he was looking for and it also 
would distinguish him among his fellows, for the 
dictionary was very seldom consulted except by the 
teacher. So he held up his hand, got permission and 


INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


walked over to the dictionary, trying to look wise, 
as though, for instance, he were seeking the meaning 
of “incomprehensibility.” After much labor he 
found “invert” — read the definition and wrote it 
down: “To turn inside out, upside down or in an 
opposite direction.” 

He shut the book and went back to his seat. “To 
turn upside down.” He put down the figures of the 
problem once again. “To turn inside out.” He 
gave it up. If it were possible to turn a number in- 
side out it would take a better mathematician than 
Beady Simons to do it. He looked at the clock 
again, and as it was only half an hour till recitation, 
he turned again to the definition which explained 
how the act of inversion could be accomplished. 

“To turn upside down.” Well, he could easily 
do that, and he did. He carefully made the “5” 
upside down, but found it harder than he thought 
it would be. The “8” was easier; so much so, in 
fact, that he wondered so slight a change in its ap^ 
pearance could make any difference in the result. 
Then he looked very hard at his work and turned to 
the rule which read : “And proceed as in multiplica- 
tion.” And so he followed it, wondering again if an 
inverted figure should be handled as if right side up, 
but resolved to risk it. But when he looked in the 
back of his arithmetic he found that there was some- 
thing wrong somewhere, for the answer was not 
19 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


right. This last maneuver had taken up ten precious 
minutes. In desperation he summoned the teacher 
to his side. 

“Will you please show me how to work my exam- 
ples?” he said. 

“What does the rule say?” asked the teacher. 
Beady repeated it. 

“Well, that’s very simple; you have just finished 
multiplication of fractions. Invert the divisor and 
then do precisely as you did in multiplication.” 
Whereupon she left him. 

Five minutes more were gone. Ought he to call 
the teacher back and suffer the humiliation of asking 
her to invert a divisor for him or ought he to go to 
the class without a question solved It is human na- 
ture to bring on a worse calamity by trying to sneak 
out of a nearer one. And thus did Beady. He spent 
the remaining fifteen minutes writing down and 
rubbing out various problems, and when the recita- 
tion came everyone in the class but Moon Davis and 
himself had solved the problems. Moon didn’t 
count, as he had never really learned anything. He 
only came to school in deference to an established 
custom and because he hated to appear odd. 

When every right hand went up except Moon’s 
and Beady’s the teacher looked at the latter and asked 
him how many problems he had solved. 

20 


INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


“None,” said Beady, trying to look as though he 
thought them too trivial to bother with. 

“Just what I expected when I saw you idling your 
time away all morning,” said the teacher. “I ex- 
plained how they were done, so you at least ought 
to be able to put one on the board. Take the tenth.” 

“I can’t do it,” said Beady, staring at his book, 
his voice husky with emotion. 

“You can’t do it? Have you tried it?” 

“Yes’m,” said Beady. 

“What!” continued his tormentor. “You cannot 
solve that simple problem? You, the oldest pupil in 
the class! Ellie, show Benjamin how this question 
is solved.” 

Ellie was the youngest member of the class, almost 
a head shorter than Beady. She marched forward 
with a proud, uppish air, and put the problem on 
the board. Then she took the ruler the teacher 
handed her and explained the process, and she was 
as familiar with the word “invert” as if she had 
known it from birth. When the teacher made 
Beady raise his downcast head and look at the black- 
board and the simple meaning of the word flashed 
upon him he pined for sackcloth and ashes. 

It seemed to him that he had reached the lowest 
depth possible to a mortal. The time when he first 
started to school and brought his primer home every 
night, wasting gallons of midnight oil as he lay on 
21 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


the floor before the fire with his head up near the 
grate and his feet spread out toward the door — the 
time when he spelled aloud “a” “w” “1” and, after 
looking at the picture opposite, pronounced it 
“screwdriver,” was nothing to this! Even a blun- 
der he once thought could never be lived down — 
the time he had volunteered to read aloud an item 
in the paper about “Napoleon’s two eyes” — sank into 
insignificance before this. These blunders, to be sure 
were only known to his older brothers and sisters 
who had heartlessly commented upon them. He had 
suffered then, but how much more humiliating it was 
to have Ellie Moreland stand there with that supe- 
rior air and explain the simplicity of the division of 
fractions to him with a look in her big blue eyes that 
must have resembled the learned Hypatia’s when she 
taught the giddy youths of Alexandria! And he 
hated her with an everlasting hatred! 

He sat and brooded on his mighty wrongs with a 
Byronic expression on his grimy face. He imag- 
ined himself grown rich and renowned for his learn- 
ing; or made ruler of a great province for mighty 
deeds of valor and wisdom, and, better yet, his 
teacher and her accomplice entirely within his power. 
He condemned the first offender to an awful death 
as he thought of the rank injustice she had done him 
by reminding him of his advanced age — as if she 
could afford to do that! The picture of Ellie kneel- 
22 


INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


ing before him with her arms extended in agonizing 
entreaty made him squirm uneasily in his seat, but he 
vowed that he would harden his heart and spare 
her not! 

This was on Friday. All the rest of the day Beady’s 
mind was occupied with plans for temporary ven- 
geance to tide him over to the time when fate would 
deliver his enemies into his hands. He had almost 
decided the proper punishment for Ellie would be 
to put a bat in her desk, but as yet nothing mean 
enough for the teacher had entered his mind. Mean- 
while these things were crowded out of his mind 
for the time being by a circus which was to visit 
the town on Saturday afternoon. 

It arrived early in the morning and naturally not 
a mother in the town could find a son to perform 
the chores she had been saving up all week to fore- 
stall on Saturday the patron saint of idle little boys. 
By afternoon Beady had struck up quite an acquaint- 
ance with three small brothers who were one of the 
chief attractions of the circus. Each one was a genius 
in his line, either in swinging on the trapeze at a 
dizzy height, holding to the other two by insignifi- 
cant parts of their respective anatomies, or turning 
all kinds of combination somersaults. They were 
dressed in tights of dazzling scarlet, adorned with 
gilt spangles. 

The youthful mathematician was in the audience, 
23 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


her towey hair having emerged from its chrysalis 
state of smooth braids into a fluffy aureole of crimps. 
She wore a white dress, and, as Beady gave her a 
swift, accidental glance, he believed all that he had 
ever heard about the heartlessness of fair women. 
He refused to think of her, however, and turned 
again to the circus ring, where all was as merry as 
a marriage bell. Presently one of the red-clad lads 
ran out of the ring, mounted the breastworks of sod 
thrown about it, and stood gazing over the crowd for 
a moment. Then, quick as a monkey, he darted down, 
and ran up the seats to where Ellie sat, and stooping 
down imprinted a kiss upon her cheek. He was back 
again in the center of the ring before she had time 
to catch her breath, and everybody was laughing. 

But, lo! instead of being gratified by being thus 
singled out as the favorite of the shining one in 
scarlet and gilt, the little girl hid her face in her lap 
and shed tears of shame and bashfulness, regardless 
of the injury to her stiffly starched skirts and the 
dishevelment of her flaxen crimps. And her father, 
though he tried to assuage her grief and draw away 
her hands from her face, looked around at the neigh- 
bors and laughed brutally by stealth. And what 
must have been the glee of Beady Simons as he wrig- 
gled his toes and saw from afar the downfall of 
the proud! 

Later in the day, after the concert was over and 
24 


INVERSION OF FRACTIONS 


nearly all the spectators who had resisted the gentle 
wooings of the man-fish and the five-legged sheep 
of the side shows had left the grounds, the three 
young acrobats came out, divested of their purple 
and fine linen, looking just like common, dark, skinny 
boys, and utterly ignorant of the fact that behind 
an empty wagon lurked a deadly foe in the person 
of Beady Simons. As they drew nearer the enemy 
stepped out and, grabbing the smallest one, promptly 
“wiped up the earth with him.” 

“I’ll learn you,” said he, descending to the lan- 
guage of the uncultured in his excitement. “I’ll 
learn you how to insult a lady!” Then, as he saw 
what a pitiful excuse for a man this young gallant 
was, and how his brothers stared in bewilderment 
and terror, Beady Simons repented his harshness. 
“Excuse me,” he said, helping the inverted one to his 
feet and brushing the dust from his clothes, “but 
I like to see a fellow have some manners.” 

Whereupon he walked with the three to their ho- 
tel, as good friends as before. But on Monday, at 
school, he gave Ellie two gumdrops as a token that 
hostilities were suspended. 


25 



ZENOBIA 



ZENOBIA 


Z ENOBIA lay motionless on a heap of bodies 
piled in reckless confusion on a table. All were 
in a more or less state of nakedness, and Zenobia her- 
self wore only a pair of purple stockings. Also, all 
were in a state of decrepitude, maimed and mangled 
as from a mighty battle. 

Some had no heads, while others had merely lost 
their scalps, had their noses scraped off or eyes caved 
in. Some were limp and flabby of body and limb, as 
though their vitals had wasted away, and some had 
a hand, foot or leg missing. It was a pitiful sight, 
and all the more terrible as all this ruin had been 
wrought, not by grown men and women, but by 
children, and in most cases by little girls. Their 
injuries were the price paid for love, for this was 
a doll’s hospital the week before Christmas, and 
Madame Kalo, general superintendent, had prom- 
ised to have every one of her patients in good con- 
dition for the Christmas eve. 

In contrast to her companions, Zenobia was re- 
stored to health; her blond hair had been glued on 
and newly brushed and curled; her pink and white 
complexion had been restored; her big blue eyes 
29 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


which lately had rattled about inside her head in a 
most distressing way, were now in their place again 
and able to open and shut. In fact, Zenobia was 
all ready to be restored to her family, when Madame 
Kalo discovered that her new shoes were too small. 
She had promised to have Zenobia ready by four 
o’clock and it was now almost that time, so all that 
Madame Kalo could do was to put her shawl over 
her head and hurry to the supply house a few blocks 
away and exchange them, calling to her neighbor, 
the milliner across the street, to watch out for any 
customers and tell them that she would be back 
shortly. 

All was silent for a time in the doll hospital, but 
presently a man appeared at the door, and after a 
while came into the room. He was decidedly 
disheveled and dirty and looked as though he might 
be seeking to enter as a patient. But such was not 
the case; all he wanted was a quarter from his long 
suffering sister, the doll doctor, that he might again 
assuage the terrible thirst that was upon him. He 
went to the money drawer but Madame Kalo had 
emptied it before she left. He sat down and pon- 
dered the situation. He did not care to see his sister, 
and would never have thought of visiting her had 
he been sober. His visit now was the act of a des- 
perate man whose credit is gone and who must have 
another drink. 


30 



He threw dignity to the winds and set out in pursuit of the doll. 


31 



ZENOBIA 


His eyes fell upon Zenobia as she reposed on the 
top of the pile in all her restored beauty. He went 
over and picked her up, then went out the door 
hunting the nearest saloon. 

Presently as he walked along, very straight and 
stiff to show how sober he was, and carrying Zenobia 
dangling by one leg, a man and a little girl ap- 
proached him. The man eyed Sam Kalo sharply 
but the little girl never looked at him. She looked 
at Zenobia, and after they had passed, she clasped 
her father around the knees and said in a terrible 
stage whisper, “Papa, oh, papa, he’s got Zenobia. 
He’s kidnapping her. Get her! Get her!” 

Mr. Graham stopped bewildered, and stared at 
the doll whose curls trailed now in the dust. His 
last recollection of Zenobia was an eyeless and hair- 
less monstrosity who was always perched in his 
easy chair; and although he knew his wife had 
taken her to the hospital to be repaired for Christ- 
mas, and although he and his daughter were now 
on their way to bring her home, he failed to recog- 
nize her. 

“That isn’t your doll; how would that bum get 
her?” he said. “Come on,” and he sought to lead 
Nora away. “It is! It is!” shrieked Nora; and be- 
ing a child very much accustomed to having her 
own way and sharing her mother’s contempt for his 
knowledge of children, she pulled away from him 
33 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


and went alone to the rescue of her doll. She grabbed 
Zenobia by the head, taking care not to again pull 
off her hair, and as she grabbed she cried, “Give 
me my doll, bad man!” 

Now although Sam Kalo knew the doll did not 
belong to him, he had no reason to believe that it 
belonged to the ill-mannered child who thus ac- 
costed him. He was bound in honor to protect the 
property of his sister’s customers when it was left 
in her charge, so he jerked Zenobia from the grasp 
of Nora and started to run as best he could. In 
the scuffle one of Zenobia’s stockings fell to the pave- 
ment and this the stricken little mother picked up 
and with sobs and tears held it before her father’s 
eyes. “There,” she sobbed, “you see it is Zenobia! 
Here is her stocking I made out of your old socks 
you gave me.” 

He could not deny it, the colors, the cut and his 
daughter’s peculiar and puckered sewing, over which 
he and her mother had laughed in secret, all pro- 
claimed that this was indeed Zenobia, that she was 
ruthlessly being stolen, and that here was foul play 
of the foulest kind. 

His blood was up. His daughter was the apple 
of his eye and it broke his heart to see her grieved. 
So although he was a man of dignity and decorum, 
he threw them to the winds and set out in pursuit 
of the doll. 


34 


ZENOBIA 


No drunken brute should be allowed to steal his 
daughter’s doll and pawn it for drink. Besides he 
would have to stop her crying some way, and of 
the two, he chose rather to face a Sam Kalo in his 
drunken state than to face his daughter in all the 
throes of an overwhelming grief. 

By this time quite a crowd of curious men, women, 
children and dogs had gathered to see what the 
trouble was and these all followed along after Sam 
Kalo, Nora and her father. 

Seeing a saloon near, Sam Kalo entered this haven 
of rest, and into it after him went the stricken little 
mother seeking her child, and after her came her 
father. “Give me my doll!” said Nora. “Excuse 
me,” said her father, “but the doll you are carrying 
belongs to my daughter, and we will trouble you 
for it.” Sam only hugged Zenobia to his heart. Mr. 
Graham turned for help to the saloon keeper. “Par- 
don me,” he said, “but my little girl is much dis- 
tressed to find her doll in the hands of this drunken 
man. Perhaps you can persuade him to give it up.” 
“Let no man dare to take my child from me,” said 
Sam, flourishing Zenobia around his head. “It’s no 
put in of mine,” remarked the bar-keeper. 

The crowd had followed the three principal actors 
into the saloon and several little girls shrieked in 
sympathy with Nora, as they saw Zenobia’s peril. 
Little boys laughed in glee, and so did grown men; 
35 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


while women said how terrible a sight it was to be- 
hold. Just then a big policeman, sauntering by, en- 
tered the doorway and then inquired, “What kind 
of a rough house have you here, Riley?” “Two 
drunken men fighting over a baby doll,” said the 
bartender. “They came in here off the street. I wish 
you would take them out.” 

“Come along now without any fuss,” said the po- 
liceman, taking Sam Kalo by the shoulder and start- 
ing to collar Mr. Graham also. “I am not drunk,” 
said that individual indignantly. “This man has 
stolen my daughter’s doll and I wish to recover it.” 
“Well, come along,” replied the policeman, “and 
we’ll let the magistrate settle the case.” And he took 
the lead, Nora and her father following behind. “I 
will buy you another doll,” said her father. “Let’s 
go home and let the man have it.” “O papa, I just 
couldn’t leave Zenobia with that man,” sobbed Nora. 
“Please get her! Please get her!” 

During the journey of a few blocks, the police- 
man managed to get possession of Zenobia and on 
arriving at their destination he bore the doll before 
the majestic figure of the police court justice. 

“Where did you get that doll?” asked the justice, 
addressing himself to Sam. “Judge,” he answered, 
“I found that doll deserted and forlorn and took 
her to heart. I have cared for her for years; she 
is the only chick or child I have ever had. Do not 
36 


ZENOBIA 


take her from me or I will not answer for the con- 
sequences. She is my one hope and I have only her/’ 
and Sam began to cry. “I don’t care to hear that 
nonsense,” remarked the judge. “Take him away 
till Monday and I will hear the case.” The police- 
man, with true gentlemanly instinct, handed Zenobia 
to Nora and led away his charge, who had burst 
into loud lamentations and seemed heartbroken as he 
was heard begging for his child. 

Nora hugged her doll close and started for the 
door. “Not so fast,” said the judge. “If that is 
your doll how did this man get hold of it?” There- 
upon Mr. Graham told how Zenobia had been left 
at the doll hospital and how Nora had recognized 
her on the street. 

“If the doll was taken from Madame Kalo’s, as 
you say,” remarked the sage of the police court, “and 
you yourself did not know it until your daughter 
told you it was her doll, I cannot let her take it with- 
out its identification by Madame Kalo at the doll hos^ 
pital. Leave it here till Monday morning and come 
back then with a witness,” and he stretched out his 
hand for the doll. 

But the magistrate did not know Nora and her 
feminine contempt for the majesty of the law. “I 
won’t leave Zenobia here,” she said. The justice 
looked helplessly at the father as if asking how he 
managed his daughter. “It isn’t regular, you know,” 
37 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


he said. “I have no authority to give the doll into 
her possession without proof that it is hers; unless 
you will give bond for its production in court on 
Monday.” 

So, Mr. Graham deposited a $10 bill as Zenobia’s 
bond, and taking his daughter — now become a very 
meek child — by the hand, he left the police station 
and went to the doll hospital to see Madame Kalo. 
That worthy woman, distressed at the unaccountable 
disappearance of her patient, gladly promised, when 
she heard the tale, to appear in court and identify 
it as belonging to Nora, and this settled, the matter 
rested. 

The next morning Nora went to church with her 
mother and heard a Christmas sermon. The preacher 
told how God sent his only son from heaven to re- 
claim the world from its sins; and how the true spirit 
of Christmas was shown not in feasting and giving 
gifts to our friends, but in being willing to give up 
what we valued most for the good of our fellow 
men. It was a very eloquent sermon, inspiring all 
to noble deeds and the desire to renounce all that 
life holds dear. 

Nora was io years old, and while slight and small 
for her age, she was a precocious child and full of 
fancies. As she listened to the impassioned words 
of the preacher she thought of Zenobia and of the 
poor outcast drunkard who had wept so bitterly when 

38 


ZENOBIA 


she was taken from him, declaring she was all he 
had to love and that deprived of her he had no hope. 
Nora was of the stuff of which martyrs are made; 
she had all the stubbornness of a martyr, as her par- 
ents well knew. But she also had a spiritual intensity 
like that which makes nuns of the passionist order, 
and of this her parents knew no more than if Nora 
were a Chinese child they had never seen. 

Then and there Nora resolved to give Zenobia 
to the man for the sake of his soul’s salvation, and 
having made the resolve, she went home in an ex- 
alted state of mind and was so angelic all day as 
she sat quietly with Zenobia in her arms that her 
mother looked at her in awe and wondered if she 
would live long. Nora had always been a little Eva 
child by spells; a most unusual child, as her mother 
had remarked to her father, who had of course 
agreed with her; and now they looked at her with a 
vague wonder as to what was going on in her mind. 
But Nora kept her counsel to herself. 

In fact, she was thinking how Zenobia would re- 
claim the drunkard and how great would be his 
gratitude to her who had made this great sacrifice 
for him. She even imagined him on his death bed 
sending for her and restoring Zenobia to her arms, 
while with his last breath he showered blessings on 
her who had given Zenobia to him. Standing around 
39 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


the bed was a shadowy circle of admiring friends 
and relatives. 

“Put on Zenobia’s best clothes,” said Mr. Gra- 
ham to his daughter the next morning, “for I have 
given bond for her appearance in court and will have 
to take her with me.” “Papa, I want to go too,” 
said Nora; and although her father saw no need 
of it, Nora’s wish as usual prevailed, her mother 
coming to the rescue with the statement that she 
did not wonder the child was loath to let the doll go 
without her again, and that she would herself go 
along and finish her Christmas shopping that 
morning. 

Madame Kalo was there as she had promised, and 
before them all the would-be abductor was brought 
in to answer for his crime. Forty hours or more of 
total abstinence, except for a dose or two of restora- 
tives combined with the cleansing ministrations of 
the bath and barber, had indeed made another man 
of Sam Kalo without the help of Zenobia. He ap- 
peared a clean, sober, and rather handsome young 
man, heartily ashamed of himself. 

Nora, whose courage began to fail her, at the last 
moment, wishing to have her ordeal over as soon as 
he was brought in, took the whole proceedings into 
her own hands. She stepped forward and placed 
Zenobia in all her finery, but still in her stocking 
feet, in his arms. 


40 


ZENOBIA 


“You may have her,” she said, in a shaky little 
voice and with trembling lips, and turning she ran 
to her mother and buried her head in her lap and 
burst into tears. 

“What’s the matter with the looney kid now?” 
asked Sam Kalo. “I don’t want her fool doll.” And 
he gave Zenobia a fling, landing her safe and sound 
against Nora’s curls. 


4i 




CONSUELO 


CONSUELO 


C ONSUELO,” said Tony, “sit there.” And 
Consuelo sat there. Consuelo was a small 
brown dog, and “there” was the chair on which she 
was accustomed to sit during her little master’s 
violin recitals. The recital began with “My Mary- 
land,” and with that it also ended; for of that con- 
sisted the musician’s whole repertoire. And in that 
one small dog consisted his whole audience. From 
her dancing eyes and swift wagging tail Tony drew 
his inspiration; and he bowed and scraped before 
her, trying to see just how excited he could make her 
and still keep her on the chair. Consuelo and the 
violin were the two things of which Tony was the 
sole possessor. The violin was the one with which 
his father had furnished the music for the country 
dance where he had first met Tony’s mother; and so 
was the boy’s inheritance in the direct line of descent. 
The dog he had acquired, and it was all the more 
precious on that account. 

Tony’s parents were dead and he lived with Mr. 
Tyner, who kept a hotel and a livery stable. The 
boy did chores either about the stable or kitchen, as 
he happened to be most needed, and thus earned 
45 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


his board and clothes. Consuelo had been given to 
him by a drover for whom he had run errands. But 
she had failed to find the same favor in the eyes 
of Mr. Tyner that she had found in Tony’s, and he 
was accustomed to grumble about her, and aid her 
exit from his presence with his foot, causing her 
owner great distress. He had obtained reluctant 
permission for her to sleep in the stable, and it was 
there he held his concerts. To-day, before it was 
over, he heard Mr. Tyner calling him. 

“What are you up to now?” said he, coming in as 
Tony started to answer his call. “The women folks 
want you at the house. I’m going to give that dog 
to the first man that will take it away,” said he to 
the hostler. “It’s a regular nuisance. Whenever 
you want that boy he’s fooling away his time with it. 
Besides it’s liable to go mad any minute and give us 
all the hydrophobia.” But Tony and Consuelo were 
far on their way to the house, and did not hear this 
decree. 

When, a few days afterward, Tony returned from 
an errand to the railway station, where Consuelo was 
debarred from accompanying him lest her friskiness 
should cause her death, he could not find his dog. No 
one about the place had seen her just lately. Up 
and down the little street, through the alleys and 
across the fields Tony wandered all his spare time, 
dreading at first that he should find her poisoned and 
46 

















* 





















s 












CONSUELO 


lying stiff and cold in death; but afterward wishing 
that even that might come to pass rather than this 
fearful uncertainty about her fate. But the days 
passed and he neither found her nor heard of her 
and concluded she must have been drowned by some 
malicious person. So he played “My Maryland’’ 
in sadness — dogless and alone. 

One day when he was playing, Harry Stetson 
heard him. Harry Stetson was the manager and 
star performer of the Stetson Dramatic Company, 
which was playing Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the town 
and stopping at Tyner’s hotel. Like Tony in his 
music, one piece was all the company knew; and it 
hustled it to play that, since many hardships had 
diminished its numbers till they were obliged to 
double up, and sometimes triple up, on their char- 
acters. 

So when Harry Stetson saw this slip of a boy 
mournfully playing his violin, it occurred to him that 
here was a good person to play Topsy, who lately 
had been played by the same person who was Eliza 
and Marie St. Clair. The boy was just the size and 
build for Topsy, and could be made use of in many 
other ways. If he knew a few pieces on the violin 
so much the better, for Harry Stetson was original 
in his ideas and interpolated freely in the production 
of the play. Accordingly, when the music had ended 
49 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


he approached the player and asked him if he could 
read. 

“Oh, yes,” said Tony, “my parents gave me a good 
education when they were alive.” 

Harry Stetson smiled, and then made to the won- 
dering boy the proposition that he quit the hotel 
business, and join the Stetson Dramatic Company, 
where his work would be much lighter and he would 
have a chance to rise in the world. 

To Tony this seemed a magnificent offer, and as 
he had a growing dislike for Mr. Tyner since a 
vague suspicion had formed in his mind that he 
knew more about the disappearance of Consuelo 
than he cared to tell, it was accepted without much 
hesitation. And when the dramatic company left 
town the next morning, Tony went with it, his 
mind filled with visions of great future histrionic 
honors. Tony made a good Topsy, that is a very 
impish one — and took much pleasure in his perform- 
ance and much pride in the dramatic company. 

One night after he had been playing Topsy for 
several weeks, they played in the little town hall at 
Scarborough. They played in the town hall because 
Scarborough had no opera house. Hardly any of the 
towns had where the Stetson Company played. 

Eliza had crossed the ice, followed by the imag- 
inary bloodhounds; George Harris had made his 
thrilling speech ; Phineas Fletcher had quoted Scrip- 

50 


CONSUELO 


ture and called himself to time in his accustomed 
manner; Marks had asked for tenderness of treat- 
ment on account of his having been reared a pet; 
Uncle Tom and Eva had become friends; Miss 
Ophelia had been presented to her black protege, 
and the latter was executing a clog dance, when a 
belated comer, a strapping man with yellow whisk- 
ers, entered the door which was at the end of the 
hall opposite the stage. And following this man 
also entered a small brown dog. A dog rough and 
unkempt-looking and very muddy, to correspond 
with the boots and pantaloons of its companion; but 
Tony gave one glance and knew that it was Con- 
suelo. 

The dance suddenly stopped, and Topsy walked to 
the front of the stage and stretched out her arms, and, 
her eyes glowing, called, “Consuelo! Consuelo!” 

The dog, which was trotting to a place of repose 
under the seats, turned with her ears alert and her 
body all animation, and started with joyous bounds 
for the stage, whence came the sound of her little 
master’s voice. Then she stopped bewildered and 
stared at the black apparition holding out its arms 
to her. Then she looked all around in perplexity. 

“Come here, Consuelo,” she heard, and the voice 
was that of him she had known and delighted to 
obey in days gone by; but what was this who spoke 
it? If ever a dog was dumbfounded, it was Con- 
51 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


suelo. What was this creature with hideous face 
and wriggling pigtails of hair, who called to her 
with the voice of her beloved little master, who was 
now gone from her world? Some demon luring her 
thus to destruction? She had learned that a kind 
and coaxing voice is sometimes but a snare; she 
turned to flee from this frightful sorcerer. Then 
once again she heard that voice, “Consuelo!” and this 
time it was full of woe and pleading. What power 
could simulate those tones? Half way down the 
aisle the little dog turned back and stood still, trem- 
bing in an agony of indecision. 

Then stretching at full length, tense, transfixed, her 
body flat on the floor, her eyes raised to heaven as if 
calling thence aid in her sore perplexity, Consuelo 
gave forth such a prolonged and piteous howl as 
never before proceeded from the mouth of a dog. 
Then slowly and with many a backward glance, she 
went back to her new owner. 

In after years he suffered much for love, yet never 
did Tony feel a sharper pang than when he saw Con- 
suelo turn and go back and lie down at the feet 
of the man with the yellow whiskers. He stood 
there in helpless woe, while the audience stared in 
amazement, thinking he was a genuine darky voodoo, 
till St. Clair brought him to his senses by a rough 
shake. Then he went on playing his part, feeling 
like the clown in the story who was compelled to 
52 


CONSUELO 


crack his jokes while nearly all the family were dying 
at home. He resolved that if Consuelo left the hall 
before the play was over he would follow her, leav- 
ing the Stetson Dramatic Company Topsyless. 

“I’ll never leave this town,” said he to himself, 
“without Consuelo.” 

The play dragged its weary length along. Its 
charm which had never failed him before was gone. 
It seemed to him little Eva would never die. When 
she sat on her father’s knee and told him she grew 
weaker every day her chubby, rosy face and her fat 
little legs beneath her short dress took away to some 
degree the pathos of the scene. 

“Who would believe such a story as that?” scorn- 
fully thought Topsy behind the scenes, as he slyly 
watched through the curtains for a glimpse of Con- 
suelo. Even the dread Legree looking as fierce as 
many black streaks and red blotches on his face 
could make him, did not to-night make Tony forget 
Consuelo; and the woes of Uncle Tom no longer 
made him sniff and furtively wipe his eyes. 

When at last the curtain went down on the death 
of Uncle Tom, Tony’s part was not yet over, for 
Harry Stetson then came forward and thanked the 
audience for its patronage and attention, and an- 
nounced the performance would close with some 
remarkable violin playing by the child Topsy, fol- 
lowed by a red light tableau of Uncle Tom and Eva. 
53 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


Tony had learned two new pieces since he joined the 
dramatic company. He played these and received 
much applause, and then he began on his master- 
piece, “My Maryland.” 

He played it feelingly, for he thought not only of 
Consuelo, but of other things which the music 
brought back — memories that were growing dim and 
distant to him — the little home where his father had 
given him his first lessons on the violin, while his 
mother cooked their supper or sewed on Tony’s little 
jackets. 

As he played he saw Consuelo come slowly out 
from her refuge under the seats and gaze wistfully 
at him. With all his soul in his eyes he watched 
her, scarcely daring to breathe. Slowly and quiv- 
ering with doubt, but wagging her tail with hope, 
she advanced up the aisle again. The boy played 
on, longing to add the persuasion of his voice to 
the allurement of the music. But he dared not speak 
yet. But when her head appeared timidly above the 
top step to the stage, he pointed his bow toward the 
chair on which lately the sainted Eva had sat. 

“Consuelo, sit there,” said he. And Consuelo sat 
there — still trembling all over at his looks, yet risk- 
ing all for love. 

And then, wonder of wonders, when the curtain 
had dropped and the black creature slowly and very 
cautiously approached and seized the doubting dog 
54 


CONSUELO 


and carried her behind the scenes, and setting her in 
a corner, began to wash, and remove the black pig- 
tails — there appeared her little master’s short 
cropped hair, and gradually, from under the black, 
his face. Then Consuelo went wild with ecstasy. 
You who have never had a dog spring into your arms 
and lick your face all over and over again, can know 
nothing of the unspeakable joy that was Tony’s. 

Then came in Harry Stetson, not at all displeased 
at Tony’s improvisation, since it had taken with the 
audience, and to him Tony told Consuelo’s story and 
ventured to ask if he might take her with him. 

“Well, now, what earthly account would a dog be 
to us?” asked Harry Stetson. 

“I thought,” said Tony, hesitatingly, “she might 
be a bloodhound and chase Eliza.” 

Now the manager and star player liked a dog him- 
self. He looked at the flushed, anxious face of the 
boy, and at Consuelo licking away at the remaining 
streaks of black. 

“Well, fetch her along,” said he. 


55 


























' 












































































































































TIGLATH PILESER 



TIGLATH PILESER 



HE animal tenders with Dyson’s Greatest Show 


X on Earth said that the old lion, Tiglath Pile- 
ser, was growing ugly. They referred to his dispo- 
sition, and not to his personal appearance. Physi- 
cally he had long since lost the good looks of youth. 
He was old and mangy, and almost toothless; his 
mane, once so thick and tawny, was thinned and 
faded, and he was run down in flesh. The little 
boys who were awestruck by the fearful and daz- 
zling beauty of the Bengal tiger, wagged their heads 
tantalizingly at Tiglath Pileser and mocked his gray 
hairs without evoking any response. He simply lay 
still and blinked his sleepy old eyes. 

Tiglath Pileser was a-weary of life. He would 
that he were dead. For forty years he had been 
in captivity, and had ridden in the train so much it 
made his head swim to think of it. People say that 
travel imparts a polish that nothing else can; but 
Tiglath Pileser did not show it. He did not show 
it any more than does a Wandering Pete or a Weary 
Wraggles ; and perhaps for the same reason. He had 
never been able to travel in a Pullman and take his 
meals in the diner, but had to eat packed lunches 


59 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


or pick-ups; and so was not able to observe the ex- 
clusiveness of high breeding. 

Nevertheless, in the earlier years of his captivity, 
Tiglath Pileser had worn an expression of aristo- 
cratic hauteur and had been accustomed to pace his 
cage, lashing his tail and gazing with sullen fierce- 
ness at the people who crowded to see him, as per 
advertisement, the largest and handsomest specimen 
of the African lion in captivity. 

But gradually his spirit was broken; and no won- 
der, for every day he suffered the humiliation of 
being stared at by persons who made him feel thank- 
ful that he was a lion. Constant scrutiny will de- 
moralize the best of us; and it finally preyed on 
Tiglath Pileser’s nervous system — especially the eat- 
ing of his meals on exhibition. He grew morose, 
and the demon of discontent gleamed in his yellow 
eyes. He gradually quit pacing his cell, and spent 
nearly all his time brooding, stretched out on the 
floor. 

Of what did he think? Perhaps of his old home, 
far away on the skirts of the Barcan desert, and the 
changes life had brought to him. Perhaps even on 
the mystery of his own identity, for Tiglath Pileser 
had never been a common lion, but had always had 
an introspective mind, with ideaettes and thought- 
lettes far beyond his educational advantages. If he 
had been human he would have been a Schopen- 
60 


TIGLATH PILESER 


hauer. He was the original of the lines you have 
no doubt seen in the children’s rhymes below the 
picture of the lion looking into the river — in the at- 
titude of Narcissus, but with none of his vanity. 

“A lion gazed down at his shadow one day; 

Said he: ‘I look fierce, I declare! 

No wonder that people keep out of my way, 

And wish they were birds of the air: 

“ ‘And really, I own, I myself feel afraid, 

Sometimes when I hear myself roar/ 

And he wished, as he went and lay down in the shade, 
That he need be a lion no more.” 

But that was long before this, and by this time 
Tiglath Pileser had even lost his interest in abstract 
speculation, and seemed merely to have a vague 
desire that he need not be anything any more. Count- 
less turnings backward and forward had dizzied his 
understanding. 

But the feelings of Tiglath Pileser made no dif- 
ference to Dyson Brothers. The price they had paid 
for him was too far in the distance, and he had ceased 
to be a paying card; so they kept right on with their 
travels, and one fine day landed at Cape Town. It 
was the first visit of the Greatest Show on Earth 
to Africa, and after the Cape Towners had seen its 
glory, it started by rail to Johannesburg. 

A mile out of town the rails spread and threw a 
car down a bank. The car spread, and threw a part 
61 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


of its contents; among them the cage of Tiglath Pile- 
ser, old and rusty like its occupant. So the cage 
spread and threw out the old lion, who stood, for 
the first time in forty years as he was created — free, 
if not equal! 

For a moment he stood bewildered; then, with a 
mighty thrill, he realized he was free! “Away to the 
sands!” sang his exulting spirit, and he set out for 
the cover of the woods; the showmen, who thought 
him about to die of old age, and not worth pursuit, 
waving their caps at him, crying: “Farewell to 
thee, Araby’s daughter!” 

On he went, over kopje and along vaal. What 
guided his steps? Did he know he was going home, 
or was he unconsciously led by that capricious thing 
we call chance, instinct or providence, according to 
the cut of the ideas with which we are clothed? 

Anyway, seventeen months and eleven days after 
he left Cape Town, Tiglath Pileser, stiff in the knees 
and wheezy in the throat from sleeping out nights, 
stood on a rocky spar overlooking a green level on 
the border of the Barcan desert. From beneath the 
rocks gushed a spring which widened into a pond ; 
and hither he had been accustomed to lead his mate 
every evening to drink. 

It was the land of his birth, the home of his child- 
hood; and every loved spot which his infancy knew. 
Did unspeakable feelings fill him now? We cannot 
62 



He rose to his feet cmd listened. 

63 






TIGLATH PILESER 


tell, but let us believe so. He had gone straight to 
the spot where he had been accustomed to lie and 
sun himself and meditate to his heart’s content; 
where no such nightmare as his years of captivity 
ever disturbed his day dreams. 

There stood this Rip Van Winkle, looking down 
on the plain below where he (it seemed ages and 
ages ago) played with his brothers and sisters. Here, 
later, he had first seen his handsome mate, and here 
had taken place that bloody battle with his rival, 
Nemo. Here he had come again from a far coun- 
try, and how strange it seemed to him, and how 
weary he was! He thought wistfully of his eight by 
twelve cage! 

The place was deserted and he lay down on the 
bare rock, and rested with half closed eyes. He lay 
there a long time, too listless to move, before he 
began to hear a faint sound in the distance — a low 
moaning gradually deepening to a deafening roar. 
He slowly and painfully rose to his feet and listened. 
Presently he saw four lions approaching the pool to 
drink. Tiglath Pileser looked upon those of his own 
kind for the first time in forty years! He tried to 
give an answering roar, but it sounded hoarse and 
feeble even to himself. 

As they came nearer there was one in the company 
whom he recognized. It was his enemy, Nemo. 
Here Tiglath Pileser was, old, decrepit, and 
65 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


dispirited; and here was his foe, as young and active 
looking as he remembered him fifty years ago! His 
peculiar black and yellow markings looked as bright 
and fresh as ever. It sent a pang of bitter envy 
through the old lion’s heart. (It was not Nemo at 
all, but a son remarkably like him. Nemo himself 
had been pining for twenty years in a zoological 
garden. But of this Tiglath Pileser dreamed not.) 

The quartet stopped, and with one accord looked 
at the newcomer. Then they began to wag their 
heads and make remarks about the stranger’s appear- 
ance. 

“He must have eaten grass with Nebuchadnez- 
zar!” said one. 

Nemo started toward him. Tiglath Pileser glared 
as fiercely as his jaded old yellow eyes would permit, 
and he essayed one of his old roars that used to re- 
sound for miles ; but it ended in a wheezy rattle. For 
an instant he found himself amazed at the sound; 
and a derisive roar sounded from the company. He 
saw Nemo still advancing on him, and turned and 
slunk away with his tail between his legs. 

A week later Tiglath Pileser’s buzzard-picked 
bones lay bleaching on the desert sands. It would be 
romantic to say he died of a broken heart, but it 
would not be historically correct. It was really in- 
fluenza and sciatic rheumatism that killed him, 
though his soul was filled with harrowing feelings, 
66 


TIGLATH PILESER 


and this no doubt hastened the machine that was to 
him Tiglath Pileser to suspend activity. The player 
had withdrawn his hands from the wornout instru- 
ment — more to be likened to a horse fiddle or a cal- 
liope than a sweet toned lyre — and the rasping, dis- 
cordant music was no more. 


6 7 



















HARRIE 



















» 










HARRIE 

T T ARRIE’S father was a “fly” young man in the 
* * days of his youth. He owned a team of horses 
and a buggy, and in this buggy behind his flying 
steeds he was accustomed to court Harrie’s mother. 

One morning as this young woman set out to walk 
two miles to town to purchase her wedding dress, her 
lover being temporarily kept from her side by a 
“business” trip into the next county, her mother 
looked after her and heaved a monstrous sigh, re- 
marking with a meaning glance at her husband who 
was pottering about the yard : 

“Poor Cassie, she won’t have to walk much 
longer.” 

But alas, three weeks after the wedding the horses 
and the buggy were attached for debt and poor Cas- 
sie walked all the rest of her way through life. Her 
husband, never an energetic man except in the mat- 
ters of buggy riding and courtship, did not recover 
from the effect of his exertions in these directions, 
and, after six years of lackadaisical existence, sank 
languidly into the grave. Harrie, the only child, 
fell short in his role of comforter of his mother in 
her widowhood. It was told of him that when his 

7 * 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


father lay a corpse, he, then five years old, remon- 
strated with her for giving way to her grief. 

“What’s the use of crying, ma?” he said. “Pa’s 
dead and we can’t help it.” 

But in his way Harrie did try to help his mother. 
Her husband had left her nothing of this world’s 
goods and she was obliged to take in washing; so 
her thoughtful son instead of pestering her for spend- 
ing money, contrived to save it out of what she gave 
him to buy provisions. To do this it was necessary 
for Harrie to devise some scheme by which he could 
get the provisions without paying for them, which 
he did until when he was about twelve years old, he 
was sent to the reform farm at Bidwell. 

After the boy had gone away, from time to time 
there were unearthed from their burial ground along 
the banks of the creeks near his home, many evi- 
dences of his prudence — sacks of flour, sugar, coffee 
and a variety of other things which he had stored 
as a squirrel stores nuts. 

It was a year or two after his return that I first 
met Harrie. In desperate need of a “devil” in my 
country newspaper office one day I went down into 
the street, and seeing the boy sitting idly on a hitch- 
ing block swinging his legs, I seized upon him, and 
for some months he spent the greater part of his 
working hours in my office. 

Harrie had evidently inherited his father’s lan- 
72 


HARRIE 


guid nature. His mother was a spry, energetic little 
woman, but never was I able to see in the boy any 
trace of her disposition. He had a habit of sitting 
idly with his slim legs curled round a stool, a dreamy, 
far away smile in his long brown eyes, and paying 
no attention whatsoever to repeated instructions. In 
the beginning of our acquaintance this used to mad- 
den me and more than once, in my wrath, I sent Har- 
rie home. When I had told him in forceful lan- 
guage to go, Harrie would saunter out, but he re- 
fused to be discharged permanently, and the next 
day, or perhaps not for two days, he would gently 
return and hang around until, in the press of work, I 
gave him something to do. And when I did that, 
Harriet good nature would expand into a smile that 
illuminated the whole office and he would work very 
well for perhaps a day or two. 

Harrie was not a brilliant scholar, he never could 
learn to spell water with only one t, and the plural 
possessive he understood not, neither could he be 
made to understand it. Harrie was a drone, but I 
came after a while to respect his droning for I some- 
times seemed to catch a glimpse of something behind 
it and to imagine that perhaps he might be not a 
common drone, but one of those rare ones who cap- 
ture without effort the queen bee, success. 

There was about the boy a flavor of romance — 
something in his rich brunette beauty, the clear car- 
73 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


mine which shone through the dark transparency of 
his cheeks and the lissome grace of his movements, 
which, in spite of the fact that he was never very 
clean, brought to the mind tales of troubadors and 
fond adventure — as Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson 
said of her husband, that he had something about 
his personality that conjured up velvet breeches and 
a red sash. 

After we had been acquainted for some months, 
Harrie would sometimes when we were alone, grow 
confidential and tell me something of his life at the 
reform farm. How he had once escaped and fearing 
capture when he reached home, got off at the tunnel 
six miles below town and run straight into the arms 
of the officer in search of him ; of the old man who 
had a standing agreement with the boys to furnish 
them with tobacco if they would escape and allow 
him to capture them and so secure the reward for 
the return of fugitives; how the older boys taught 
the younger ones to swear, and to steal prunes from 
the kitchen to use in making what Harrie called “bug 
juice”; how he and one or two other kindred spirits 
led those in charge such a life that they were glad 
when he finally escaped again and did not make 
any effort to recapture him. 

Harrie told these things with the art of a true 
novelist, without the intrusion of personal feeling. 
Indeed, so artistically detached was his narrative at 
74 

















HARRIE 


times that I was led to doubt if these things had 
ever really come within his experiences or were 
wholly art. 

I paid Harrie but a miserable pittance but he 
seemed to have no ambition to earn more. He lived 
as care free as a lily of the field and nature had 
clothed his personality in robes as beautiful as the 
scarlet lily of Palestine. 

When Harrie was about sixteen years old his 
mother married for the second time and taking her 
son with her went to Bellaire to live. Some time 
later the report came to their old home that Harrie 
and his stepfather were not congenial and later we 
heard the boy had left home. 

A year or two later when in Columbus attending 
the State fair, passing one evening by a grove in the 
outskirts of the city, where some order was holding 
a picnic, I saw a dirty little tent bearing in large 
letters the startling announcement, “Come In and 
See the Devil Child and Other Wonders.” Picking 
my way among the sloppy lemonade and ice cream 
stands, walking over watermelon rinds and jostled by 
drunken men and pert women, I entered, after pay- 
ing a dime at the door, the close and dimly lighted 
tent. Here I found a five-legged cow standing on 
four legs with the superfluous one projecting from 
its back; a double headed lamb preserved in alcohol; 
and, the crowning glory of the dime’s worth of won- 
77 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


ders, the devil child. It was dead, of that there 
could be no doubt, and it reposed in a coffinlike box 
in the dim light at the farther end of the tent. It 
seemed to be petrified and was darker than a shriv- 
eled mummy, horned like Michael Angelo’s Moses, 
and its feet were hoofs. 

As the crowd inside the tent gazed with appropri- 
ate horror a soft and gentle voice behind us began 
to tell a blood curdling tale of how the mother of 
the devil child had cursed God and declared that 
she did not believe in him but in the devil, and when 
afterward her child was born it was this monstrosity 
which we beheld before us, and at the sight of which 
the mother gave a piercing shriek and expired in con- 
vulsions. 

The voice was the voice of Harrie, and when I 
turned I saw the face of Harrie, but the form was 
that of a tall, lank young man with but a suggestion 
of the grace of the boy. Suddenly the gruesome tale 
ended in a smile of recognition that dispelled all 
doubt and lifted even the gloom that hung about the 
presence of the devil child. 

In the few moments he could spare from the re- 
cital of the thrilling tale of the devil child Harrie 
told me he had travelled all over the country with 
various circuses and side shows and that now he 
was doing well and had an interest in the wonders 
of the little tent. Pressing engagements both on 
78 


HARRIE 


his part and my own prevented our meeting again 
before I left for home the next afternoon, but Harrie 
promised to write to me which he did about six 
months later. 

Ever after he had returned from the reform farm 
when any crime or misdemeanor was committed in 
his native town, as long as he remained there, ac- 
cording to the convictions of some of the citizens, 
Harrie must of necessity be the culprit. Although 
he never mentioned the fact until after he left, Har- 
rie must have known of the suspicion with which he 
was regarded, for in this letter he naively asked, of 
a robbery which had occurred in the neighborhood 
and of which the papers were full, although no 
clue to the perpetrators had been found, “Do they 
think it was me?” Then he went on to tell me he 
had sold his interest in the devil child, et cetera, had 
joined a dramatic troupe and was going to be an 
“actor.” 

In a flash as I read, it dawned upon me what Har- 
rie was meant for, and that he was intended for 
an actor from the foundation of the world. This 
was the interpretation of the aura of romance that 
surrounded him. Harrie would become a matinee 
idol doubtless; one does not need to spell well to 
be that. What a D’Artagnan he would make! I 
even pictured him as Hamlet, Rienzi, Richelieu. 
Would he be able to interpret such roles intelli- 
79 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


gently? Certainly he would render them romanti- 
cally. What might not the future hold for Harrie? 
As I mused on the wonder and mystery about him, 
the something which I had never been able to make 
out behind those dark eyes and quiet ways, his life 
seemed to me like that handkerchief which Othello 
gave to Desdemona: 

“There’s magic in the web of it; 

A sibyl that had numbered in the world 
The sun to course two hundred compasses, 

In her prophetic fury sewed the work; 

The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk ; 

And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful 
Conserved of maidens’ hearts.” 

And was not this character of the passionate Moor 
the one that would best suit Harrie when he had 
grown in years and experience? 

I had for him the foolish fondness that a man 
sometimes has for a boy — an affection that is a hark- 
ing back to the dreams and ambitions of his own 
youth. Harrie would be famous and the world would 
forget his offences; for this old world is so quick 
to forgive and forget in spite of the croakers. 

Months passed and I heard nothing from Harrie 
in his new role. The boy must have time, I thought; 
but still I had thought of him as one to spring into 
fame suddenly and I could not associate him with 
the hardships of long years of work and trial. His 
80 


HARRIE 


was the light armor of those who arrive at the sum- 
mit easily; the light heart and the careless grace; 
the genius that takes his place without effort or not 
at all. Surely the gods could not forget to favor 
Harrie who was made for success. 

* * * * * * * 

Away out on the Wheeling pike old John Glenn 
and his sister lived on the home farm. They were 
getting feeble but they refused to leave the place 
where they were born. They had lived alone for 
forty years, were set in their ways and disliked the 
thought of change, and here they could live without 
spending much money. Many tales of their wealth 
and miserliness were told, and it was said they 
had thousands of dollars hidden about the place. 
They were a tempting bait for burglars, and one 
winter evening there was a knock at the door, and 
two men pushed past the old man as he opened it 
a little way and peered out. They demanded his 
treasure, he denying there was any money about the 
place, except a little change in his pocket. But 
finally, under the threat of torture, and moved by 
the terror of his sister, he gave them $200 which 
was under a brick in the hearth. With this the men 
went away telling him they would return soon and 
that he must have $2,000 ready for them. 

When news of this bold burglary was noised about 
81 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


the Glenns were advised to leave the farm and move 
into town, but, although badly frightened, they re- 
fused to do so. Here they had lived and here they 
would die; but they got a man by the name of Mc- 
Endree to stay with them at night. McEndree was 
a dare-devil sort of a fellow, eager to encounter a 
robber; but after some weeks had passed and there 
was nothing doing he got tired and went one evening 
to a dance from which he did not return until some 
time after midnight. 

It was nearly 12 o’clock when there came a tap 
at the door. “Who’s there?” asked Glenn. “Mc- 
Endree,” was the reply, and the old man who was 
too deaf to distinguish tones, opened the door. It 
was not McEndree, but a tall man who wore a mask 
and a big black mustache. 

“I will trouble you for that $2,000,” said he. 
Glenn protested that he could not raise so much 
money to save his life, which was not true, for he 
had five times the sum hidden in different parts of 
the house, being more afraid of a bank than a bur- 
glar. He had lost some money through a bank fail- 
ure years ago, a small amount at the time, but as he 
became older the sum grew astonishingly. 

While the old man whined and his sister bewailed 
their predicament the gallop of McEndree’s horse 
was heard on the frozen ground and the burglar 
hurriedly took his departure. 

82 


HARRIE 


After that McEndree did not leave the place day 
or night and never showed himself for a dreary 
month, while the Glenns let it be noised about that 
he had gone away. Then one afternoon when there 
had been snow on the ground for three days, but 
not a footprint in it showed except to and from the 
barn, there came in broad daylight a man walking 
across the fields from the woods; a man with a big 
slouch hat on his head and pulled down over his 
ears, and with a big black mustache. They saw him 
coming and bolted and barricaded the door and con- 
cealed themselves. No one answered his knock and 
presently they heard him at the window. When, 
after a little, he had pried it open, McEndree stepped 
forth and shot him through the heart. 

As soon as the news got to town a crowd of men 
and boys went out to the scene of the tragedy. I, in 
the role of newspaper man, was among them, and 
when I went into the house I saw a big black mus- 
tache such as actors wear, lying on the table, and 
there on a board supported by two chairs, lay the 
bad actor Harrie, the lad of dreams — his own and 
mine — dreaming no more but up against the real 
thing. 


83 



THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 



THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 


J ULIA was of a trusting nature. She believed 
everything she was told, as well as a great many 
things she was not told; for she was like the luna- 
tic, the lover and the poet — “of imagination all 
compact.” Mrs. Sears used to often wonder why 
her little daughter would stand for so long looking 
out of the window on the winter landscape, which 
seemed to her dreary and uninteresting enough. But 
she did not know that Mr. Brown’s cows browsing on 
the hill behind his house, were most wonderful ani- 
mals and sometimes wandered up and stood on the 
roof and chimney. Nor had she ever descried 
painted Indians riding along the brow of the hill 
in the distance, nor did she know that lions and 
tigers infested the wooded slopes, and that a rhine- 
osifercat might appear at any moment from the jun- 
gle beyond the school house. But a little girl whose 
brother has been to the menagerie and to the wild 
west show knows about these things. 

Another thing that her mother never dreamed of 
at that time was that Julia would not have been 
much surprised to see the Lord himself as he ap- 
peared of old “walking in the garden in the cool of 

s? 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


the day.” For had they not lately moved into “God’s 
country?” Her father had said so. 

Some cynical person has said that God is the most 
interesting character in modern fiction, and certainly 
he was the most interesting character in Julia’s imag- 
ination. Why she thought of him as a stern old man 
with long white hair and beard she could not tell, 
any more than she could tell why she believed her 
soul to be a small white pebble situated somewhere 
in her stomach. 

To Julia, as to the early Hebrews, the Almighty 
was known only as the avenger. And this was because 
her brother was to her the priest and the interpreter 
of theology. The spirit of an old school Calvinist 
grandfather had descended upon Samuel. 

Not long after they had moved into “God’s coun- 
try” their father shot a rabbit as it ran across the 
yard. It was the boy’s first knowledge of the horrors 
of the abattoir, and he wept bitterly over the slaugh- 
tered innocent, his sister mingling her tears with his. 

“God will punish papa for killing that little 
bunny,” said Samuel, and at supper he refused to 
touch anything connected with the butchery, except 
a little of the gravy. 

For a long time after that Julia looked for the 
judgment to be meted out to her father, and fully 
expected the Lord to come in person to call him to 
account. 


88 


THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 


“Is that God?” she asked her mother in a fear- 
some whisper one day as old Mr. Gillespie passed 
the house; and sometimes she asked her brother the 
same question when she saw an old man. She never 
put such a question to her father — she believed he 
would not be any more apt to recognize God than 
she herself would — and besides, it is not kind to re- 
mind a transgressor of the punishment awaiting him. 

Then there came one Easter morning when her 
parents sent Julia out to look behind the snowball 
bush for a bunny’s nest. And there it was, sure 
enough — a little nest of straw and full of eggs, yellow 
and green and red and blue. And beside it there sat 
a bunny — not a make-believe bunny like her old 
calico one, but a real bunny with white fur and pink 
eyes. But alas, not a live bunny — this bunny was 
dead ; it did not move when she approached it and 
its eyes were fixed and staring. Poor little bunny, 
the night had been cold, and it had stayed out all 
night to lay those eggs for her and had perished. 
But perhaps her mother could put it behind the 
kitchen stove and bring it to life, like she did the 
little dead chicken. 

So Julia picked the bunny and the nest up in her 
arms and started to the house. The bunny felt stiff, 
as if it had been dead a long time and her heart sank. 
And then as she sped along, just as she turned the 
corner of the woodhouse, Julia came face to face 
89 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


with one whom, she doubted not for an instant, was 
the very God himself. He was tall and straight, and 
his whiskers were long and white, and his eyebrows 
were bushy and black, and his eyes looked black and 
very fierce from beneath them. For an instant she 
stood paralyzed with terror, while the bunny, the 
nest and the eggs dropped to the ground. 

“I didn’t kill it!” she cried; “I didn’t kill it!” and 
turned and ran, screaming at the top of her lungs. 

Afterward when her father had brought her back, 
trembling in his arms, she found that it was only one 
of those grandpas — her’s and Samuel’s in fact — 
whom she had never seen, and who was really the 
kindest man on earth and had brought her a doll and 
a box of chocolate drops. 

But all that was long years ago, when she was only 
four, and things had changed since then. Her father 
had killed other rabbits whose blood was still un- 
avenged, and God’s country, with only a church, a 
school house and a dwelling here and there, had 
grown into a town. And there was the bunny with 
the once white fur and the pink eyes, still dead and 
the sawdust sifting out of a hole in its side, and its 
eyes, which came out like pins, staring at you from 
its back, where Samuel had stuck them in. 

But the greatest change of all was that Julia had 
started to school. There is no iconoclast like educa- 
tion. Schools are the hot-beds of socialism, anarchy, 
90 



Painted Indians riding along the brow of the hill . 

91 











































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- 


















- 


























































































































































THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 


rebellion, and infidelity. The German student is 
the socialist agitator; the Russian student is the nihi- 
list; and the American theological professor is the 
higher critic and the heretic. 

So when Julia and Samuel started to school their 
faith in the institutions of their childhood began to 
be shaken. There was Santa Claus. Even before 
Sammy started to school, their cousins had told the 
children that there was no Santa, but they received 
the information with scorn. 

“They have no sense,” said Samuel, and his sister 
agreed with him. But afterward at school others 
told him the same thing. He told them they lied, 
but they only laughed at him. So there came a day 
when their mother had to explain to them that there 
really was no Santa Claus except the loving parents 
who tried in this way to give pleasure to their chil- 
dren. Somehow the way she explained it, it did not 
seem at all like she and papa had lied to them. 

This was Julia’s first taste of the fruit of the tree 
of knowledge, but after a while she too started to 
school and took many a bitter bite of it. Why did 
grown people tell children that some things were 
true when they were not, and why did they tell them 
that some things were not true and you found out 
after a while that they were? There seemed to be 
no method in their madness. All “reads” were not 
true. Some were and some were not. There was 
93 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


no way to tell. Why were they not all true? Was 
the story of Little Boy Blue true? — perhaps, there 
might have been such a boy as that. Bo Peep? Jack 
the Giant Killer? David and Goliath? Why were 
some stories true and some not true? How did mam- 
ma know which ones were true and which were not 
true? 

Hardly any of the stories that they read in the 
books at school were true. After a course of fiction 
relating the doings of imaginary cats, dogs, birds 
and children, the teacher began to read to them the 
best story of a man named George Washington, of 
a king, and soldiers, and of fights, and of crossing 
the river on the ice, and of many other adventures. 
But Julia had learned by this time it would be absurd 
even to ask if such a thrilling tale as this were true. 
It couldn’t be, of course. 

One Sunday, just after they had learned that there 
was no Santa Claus, Uncle Dorie was there, sitting 
on the front porch with their mother when the chil- 
dren came from Sunday School. 

“Well, kids,” said he, “what was the lesson about?” 

“Daniel in the lion’s den,” said Samuel, and Uncle 
Dorie smiled a superior sort of a smile and said: 

“And do you really believe all those yarns, Sam- 
uel?” 

Their mother spoke up quickly and with some 
sharpness: 


94 


THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 


“I don’t want you to talk that way before the chil- 
dren, Dorie.” 

The children went on into the house, and Samuel 
sat down and meditated for quite a while. Finally 
he spoke. 

“Blame it,” said he, “I just don’t believe there is 
any God, either.” 

That settled it for Julia. She rendered unto Sam- 
uel that obedience in things spiritual that St. Paul 
recommends a wife shall render to her husband. 
There was something strange about it anyway. The 
superintendent was always telling them how they 
should behave in God’s house; but they had never 
seen him at home and they went there every Sunday. 
She had lost confidence in the superintendent any- 
way, since last Christmas, when he had handed her 
off from the Christmas tree a little goblet filled to 
the brim with wine, and told her to be careful or it 
would spill, and then after she had walked very 
slowly and carefully the whole length of the aisle 
back to her seat, she found the glass was double 
and the wine was inside and could not possibly spill 
even if she turned it upside down. And everybody 
laughed at her, the superintendent most of all. 

One day the new minister came to call. He was 
a young man and the children liked him. He had 
been there before and played checkers with Samuel 
and looked at the pictures with Julia. He did not 
95 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


seem at all like a preacher and it occurred to Julia 
perhaps he was not, but that it was just another 
pretend. 

This day, though, after Mrs. Sears had gone to 
see to the supper, and had sent Samuel for the cream, 
and he and Julia were left in the room together, he 
seemed to remember about being a preacher and 
began to talk to her about God. Julia did not know 
why he did it, but the reason was this : Miss Green, 
who led the junior band, had appealed to him. She 
had been able to persuade every other little girl in 
the band to lead in prayer, except Julia. She was 
afraid she did not understand the child. Would Mr. 
Howells try to draw her out on the subject and find 
what was standing in the child’s light? 

He would. He put his arm around the little girl 
and began to tell her how she would not need be 
any more afraid to take all her little troubles to God 
than to ask her father for what she wanted. God 
loved her even more than her earthly father did. 

Then in her innocence up spoke Julia, the disciple 
of Samuel: “Oh, I know,” said she, “there really 
isn’t any God at all. Samuel and I have known it 
for a long time, but you see mama just hasn’t told 
us about it yet.” 

Before the Rev. Mr. Howells could get his breath 
Mr. Sears came in and they went out to supper. But 
96 


THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM 


as Julia looked across the table at him with such a 
smile as one augur might have given another in the 
streets of ancient Rome, he remembered Ruskin’s 
opinion that theology is a dangerous study for girls, 
and he concluded that Ruskin was right. 


97 



THE POLITICAL PAWN 



THE POLITICAL PAWN 


W HEN first he saw her she was sitting, a dis- 
consolate little figure, on the steps of the big 
red brick house where Mrs. Terrace lived with her 
husband. She was crying, and as he had never seen 
her before and knew every other girl in the neigh- 
borhood, and knew that the Terraces had no chil- 
dren, he thought she might be lost, and so, like the 
true knight errant he was, he stopped and thus ac- 
costed her. 

“Hello, kid, what’s the matter?” 

A thin little face with big hazel eyes, their beauty 
somewhat marred from crying and the dark hair that 
straggled into them, was raised to his as she said, “I 
want to go back to politics.” 

“What?” said Richard. 

“I want to go back to politics,” said the stricken 
one again. “I want to be a political pawn.” 

Richard stared at her, put his hands in his pockets, 
and gave a long whistle. He had heard such things 
before, when his mother and his cousin Nora had dis- 
cussed the suffrage subject one day at luncheon with 
himself and his little sister Cecelia for auditors. 
His mother had said, “But think, Nora, how the 

IOI 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


bad woman would be used and manipulated for po- 
litical ends, if women had the vote.” And Nora 
had answered with a snap of her eyes, “You talk like 
a poll parrot, Sallie. The bad woman, as you call 
her, is already in politics. She is already being used 
as a political pawn. It is partly to counteract her 
influence that good women now demand the vote.” 

She had said those very words, and mama had 
answered, with her cheeks very red, “Talk about a 
poll parrot! I am sure your argument is a great 
deal the staler of the two, besides not being sound.” 
And heaven knows where the affair would have 
ended, had not Cecelia, like an interposing angel of 
peace, tipped over her glass of water into Nora’s 
lap and on her new silk dress. 

And now, here before his startled gaze was one 
of those bad women. How young she seemed, not 
more than eight or ten years old, although when he 
asked her age, she protested that she was twelve; but 
he reflected afterward it would be nothing for such 
a person to perjure herself about it. But still 
how young to have already had experience as a 
pawn in the political arena where Richard himself 
was just making his entrance and finding it no pic- 
nic either. How young she made him seem, and 
he had felt so important, if somewhat bewildered 
and perplexed; for Richard was a candidate for 
mayor in the school city just started in his school, 
102 


THE POLITICAL PAWN 


and he was facing the possibility of defeat. In fact, 
he was in desperate need of help, and as he gazed 
upon the stranger she seemed to be opportunity 
knocking at his door. 

Municipal government was being taught in the 
school Richard and his sister attended and the first 
election of the school city was to be held next Friday 
under the rules and regulations drawn up by the 
teacher and approved by every citizen. When 
Richard accepted the Defender’s party nomination 
for mayor, he had thought it would be a walk-over, 
but he had awakened to the fact that he had a for- 
midable foe in Tim Terrill, the candidate of the 
Good Scouts party. The fact was that Richard had 
antagonized about half the voters while Tim stood 
in with them mightily. It came about in this wise. 

The municipal government of the school was in 
embryo and the children stood around at recess while 
teacher explained her plans to them. Richard, who 
stood with his mother on the question of woman suf- 
frage, had pointed contemptuously to the group of 
little girls who stood listening and at last venturing 
to ask questions. “The girls aren’t going to be in it, 
are they?” he asked in scorn. “Why certainly,” said 
Miss Norris, thus conferring political freedom on 
her feminine subjects with a wave of her white hand 
and with a czar-like autocracy, illustrating how 
much more simply and easily the intuitive mind of 
103 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


woman reaches the right conclusion than does the ar- 
gumentative methods of man. 

“Then I am not going to be in it,” said Richard. 

“Very well,” said Miss Norris. “If you wish to 
be known as a man without a country or rather with- 
out a city, all right. In many of the states women 
already vote and by the time these little girls are old 
enough to do so, women will likely be voting in Penn- 
sylvania; but I have never heard of a man who was 
so silly as to renounce his citizenship because women 
were allowed to vote also.” 

“Well, I don’t believe in it, anyway,” said Rich- 
ard, while Cecelia looked terribly ashamed of him, 
and the other little girls whispered to each what a 
mean boy he was and how glad they were they were 
not his little sister. 

But Richard was popular with the boys and after 
school they had coaxed him back into the school 
city. None of them thought of the dire judgment 
that the antagonizing of all the girl voters had 
brought on their party, but with masculine arro- 
gance they assumed that their sisters would be glad 
of a chance to vote for Richard. 

* * * * * * * 

“When were you in politics?” asked the candidate 
for mayor, edging nearer to the step on which sat his 
new acquaintance, and speaking in a confidential 
tone. 

104 



105 


THE POLITICAL PAWN 


“Always before I came here to live,” she said, 
adding, “but Mrs. Terrace does not want me to be 
a political pawn any longer, so she brought me here 
to be her little girl.” 

“When did you come?” asked Richard. 

“Yesterday.” 

“Are you going to school?” 

“Yes, on Monday.” And at this, the recollection 
of thirty other little pawns dressed all alike and 
marching to school together, herself among them, 
overcame the stranger, and she began to cry again. 

“I don’t know any little boys or girls here,” she 
said. 

“Never mind,” said Richard, “you know me now, 
and I will be your friend. I am running for mayor 
of our school city and if you have been in politics you 
can get all the other girls to vote for me. If you 
will I will give you something nice. I will give 
you this.” He took from his pocket a silver pencil- 
case. 

The stranger dried her tears and reached out her 
hand for the prize. “It is lovely,” she said. 

“Will you do it? Get them to vote for me for 
mayor?” said Richard as he slowly relinquished his 
hold on the prize. 

“I’ll try to,” she said, keeping tight hold of the 
case, which it had been Richard’s intention not to 
deliver till it had been earned. But who likes to 
107 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


appear stingy before a girl? And anyway he had 
to keep her in a good humor. But he remembered 
with a twinge of conscience how his little sister Ce- 
celia had wanted that pencil case and how often she 
had coaxed for it. 

His lady of mystery had been, until the day before 
Richard discovered her, one of those pathetic re- 
proaches to civilization, the institutional child; and 
worse and more of it, she had been in an institution 
whose reputation, at least in the eyes of the faction 
who had no hand in its management, had been one 
of rank favoritism and graft. 

Mrs. Terrace, president of the Civic Betterment 
Federation, had for a long time been making an in- 
vestigation of public institutions. She had heard 
from a city nurse, a friend and protege of hers, dire- 
ful tales of waste and extravagance in this home, 
which the nurse visited in her round of duties. In 
company with the nurse, Mrs. Terrace visited the 
place and saw Adelaide file out with the others to 
her supper. The lady had long contemplated adopt- 
ing a child to fill the place of her own little daughter 
who had died in infancy, and as Adelaide filing past 
raised her big dark eyes to her, Mrs. Terrace stopped 
her, and putting her hand on her head, said quite 
low that the attendant might not hear: “Are you 
hungry, little one?” 


108 


THE POLITICAL PAWN 


“Yes,” said Adelaide, naturally, as she was going 
in to supper. 

“Do they give you enough to eat here?” 

“Np,” said Adelaide, thinking perhaps that the 
statement might bring her a gift of candy or cakes. 
Besides, it was quite true, Adelaide was one of those 
thin pathetic looking children who are always hun- 
gry, as Mrs. Terrace afterward learned. 

“Just think of it, Anna,” said Mrs. Terrace in a 
tragic whisper to the nurse, “she looks half starved.” 

Tears filled the eyes of Mrs. Terrace and she said, 
“Anna, I feel a call within me to give this child at 
least a home. I can at least snatch this one child 
from the baneful influences of politics, this poor little 
political pawn.” 

And afterward, when it had all been arranged, 
and she had Adelaide in her automobile and they 
were speeding to her home, she embraced the child 
and said, “I have at least rescued you from the vortex 
of politics, dear child. No longer shall you, at least, 
be used as a political pawn.” And when they ar- 
rived home she had made the same remark to her 
husband, and that same evening to the executive sec- 
retary of the Civic Betterment Federation who came 
to consult with her about civic matters, bringing 
Adelaide in and exhibiting her proudly and with 
real affection. 

***** * * 

109 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


Cecelia had wanted that pencil case so much, but 
what are family ties when it comes to a question of 
politics? And had not his own sister been the first 
to desert those of her own flesh and blood? Else, 
why had Anna Greenwood dared to throw it up to 
him that even his sister was going to vote for his 
rival ? 

It had been discussed at the dinner table one eve- 
ning when he had appealed to his parents, demand- 
ing with indignation if Cecelia should not vote for 
him. 

“Why, of course,” his mother had said, “sister will 
vote for you.” 

“Mama, he said none of us girls had sense enough 
to vote. He told Miss Norris that and tried to keep 
us out of the school city,” Cecelia had answered with 
tears of indignation in her voice. 

“Well, you must forget all that now,” said mama, 
“and vote for Richard, of course.” 

“Hold on there, Sallie,” said father. “Since our 
daughter is now a full fledged voter her sacred rights 
as a citizen must be respected. No one, not even 
her mother, may dictate to her how she shall vote.” 

“Why, William, surely a mother has a right to 
direct the vote of her child! Surely the right of a 
mother is more sacred than anything else. I surely 
know best how Adelaide shall vote.” 

“You may counsel her, but not command,” said 

IIO 


THE POLITICAL PAWN 


father, looking at his small daughter, who had dried 
her eyes and stood regarding her champion with 
round-eyed approval. “Let Richard show her 
wherein he will make a better mayor than his op- 
ponent, but let none dare to intimidate the vote of 
a free woman.” 

“You should be ashamed to talk that way before 
the children, William,” said mama, “it is a won- 
der they have any regard for my authority at all.” 

It was Saturday afternoon when Richard had 
this strange adventure of meeting the girl who had 
long been in politics, and on Monday morning as 
Cecelia entered the schoolroom, Miss Norris called 
her. Beside the teacher stood the strange little girl. 
“Here is a new scholar, Cecelia,” said Miss Norris. 
“This little girl has just come to live with Mrs. Ter- 
race and to be her little girl. I hope you will be 
good friends with her and introduce her to the other 
little girls and let her sit with you till Jennie comes 
back.” Jennie was Cecelia’s seat mate and was home 
with the scarlet fever. 

Teacher smiled her sweetest smile at Adelaide and 
the strange child regarded her with wistful eyes. 
But the eyes of Cecelia were glued to a silver pencil 
case which hung from a blue velvet ribbon around 
the neck of the stranger. As in a dream she took the 
stranger by the hand and led her to her seat. “My 
hi 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


name is Cecelia,” she said; “what is yours? That is 
a lovely pencil case you have.” 

“My name is Adelaide,” said the stranger; “and 
you may have the pencil case if you like it. My 
new mama does not like me to wear it and she is 
going to buy me some gold beads tomorrow.” 

Immediately the treasure sank in value in the eyes 
of Cecelia, but she meekly accepted the gift which 
the stranger untied from her own neck and tied 
around that of her new acquaintance. 

“A boy gave it to me,” continued Adelaide. “A 
strange boy, on Saturday. He said I was to get 
votes for him, but I do not know how to do it. What 
is a vote?” 

At this revelation of the cruel depravity of her 
brother, Cecelia stood aghast for a moment. Then 
she asked, “Was he a red-headed boy with freckles?” 

“Yes,” said Adelaide. 

“He is a perfidus wreck,” said Cecelia, “he tried 
to keep us girls from voting. He is my brother 
Dick. Don’t you vote for him or try to get any of 
the girls to. He will make a bad mayor and have all 
us girls expelled.” 

“All right, I won’t,” said Adelaide. And she 
didn’t, and Richard was beaten. 

The next day after the election, Cecelia appeared 
at the library door where her father sat reading. 

112 


THE POLITICAL PAWN 


She carried a small white kitten, with a blue ribbon 
tied around its neck. 

“Papa,” she said, climbing into his lap, kitten and 
all, “will you ask mama to let me keep this kitty? 
You see, papa, when the ladies came to our school 
and organized the Little Animal’s Friends, we all 
signed a pledge to be kind to animals. But papa, 
I never had any animal to be kind to, and when the 
ladies came back and asked us how many had kept 
their pledge, I couldn’t hold up my hand; and they 
looked awful cross at me, and one of them said — 
how sorry she was that any little girl had broken her 
pledge. I need a kitty to be kind to.” 

“I understand,” said her father, “that this cat is 
absolutely necessary to redeem your pledge. But 
where did you get it?” 

“Tim Terrill gave it to me,” said Cecelia. 

“Oh, a gift from the new mayor?” said her father. 

“He promised it to me,” said Cecelia, “because I 
voted for him and tried to get the other girls to.” 

“Did you ask him for it?” 

“Oh, no, papa. I just told him I would like a 
kitten, but I didn’t ask him for it. Papa, you think 
that was all right, don’t you?” 

“Sure it was all right,” said her father, “you are 
she who can do no wrong, and I will talk to your 
mother about the kitty.” 


1 13 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


After a while he put her down and took his hat 
and started for the door. 

“Where are you going, papa?” asked Cecelia. 
“My child,” said he, “I’m going to join the Men’s 
Association opposed to Woman Suffrage.” 


THE MISSING LINK 




























































































































































































. 






THE MISSING LINK 

P ROFESSOR FERRIN, the noted ethnologist, 
after many years’ research, has at last discov- 
ered the true Missing Link so long sought in vain 
by Mr. Darwin. This wonderful being was found 
a few years ago by Professor Ferrin among the Tree 
Dwellers, people of New Zealand. It has been pro- 
nounced by all the eminent ethnologists of the day 
to be the true Missing Link between the human and 
the brute creations. It is not an ape, neither is it 
human. 

This wonderful, mysterious and intensely inter- 
esting being will be on exhibition at the Town Hall 
in Shanetown for a few days only, and the opportu- 
nity to see this only known representative of a sup- 
posed extinct species should be lost by none. 

Doors now open. 

Admission 15 cents. Children 10 cents. 

COME ONE, COME ALL. 

Many yellow and pink seven by ten hand-bills 
bearing the above announcement were thrown in at 
the doors of the village of Shanetown early one 
ii 7 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


Wednesday afternoon. And from that time until 
Sunday afternoon the inhabitants of Shanetown reck- 
lessly squandered their means to the enriching of 
the noted ethnologist. 

Professor Ferrin was a young looking man to have 
acquired such an eminent place among scientific men. 
Zip’s looks gave no clew to his age (Zip was the name 
the professor had given his Missing Link). He 
looked neither old nor young. He had a cunning, 
weazened, human-like face, and measured five feet 
and five inches. He walked upright, and wore a pair 
of tan-colored pajamas, a negligee shirt and a light 
flannel coat. He also wore socks and slippers, a 
silk hat, and carried a cane. His appearance gave 
the impression that the missing links were a rather 
dandyfied race of beings. 

Zip used a knife, fork and spoon at his meals, and 
drank coffee from a cup. He could dress and un- 
dress himself, shake hands, bow and dance, and al- 
together seemed a very intelligent link to have been 
missing so long; so that not only the Shanetown chil- 
dren, but also their parents who knew the value of 
fifteen cents, were lured to the town hall more than 
once during the week to see this wonderful and amus- 
ing ancestor. 

On the street, in the stores, even in the homes of 
Shanetown the Missing Link became the chief topic 
of conversation, and many persons who had formerly 
1 1 8 


THE MISSING LINK 


regarded Mr. Darwin as an amusing lunatic began 
to seriously discuss the subject of evolution and to 
consider the possibilities of the Darwinian theory. 
And when Professor Ferrin appeared on the street 
he was followed by an admiring crowd of boys who 
loved him as Desdemona loved Othello, for the dan- 
gers he had seen. 

The professor, in the meantime, announced by 
means of other glaring hand-bills that he would lec- 
ture at the town hall Saturday evening, taking the 
Missing Link as his subject; giving the story of his 
capture and training, an explanation of the peculiari- 
ties by which it had been possible to determine be- 
yond the shadow of a doubt that he was the real Miss- 
ing Link, etc., and at the close of the lecture free 
opportunity would be given the people to see Zip 
and note his wonderful intelligence, as exemplified 
by the many things he had been taught by the pro- 
fessor. 

The professor had distributed bills for miles 
around. It was fine October weather; the roads 
were good and it was a bright moonlight night. The 
oldest inhabitant could not remember when there 
had been such a crowd at an entertainment in Shane- 
town. The town hall was packed till there was no 
longer standing room. 

One of the boys who had distributed bills for the 
professor was Jimmie Tartuff. Since first the Miss- 
119 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


ing Link had struck the town, Jimmie had kept him- 
self impoverished by going to see it; and still his con- 
suming thirst for the study of this fascinating sub- 
ject was not satisfied, and he eked out an occasional 
admission by doing errands for the professor. By 
Saturday evening he had insinuated himself into 
the confidence and esteem of both the professor and 
his protege, and was permitted to act as henchman at 
the lecture and the free show which followed. 

There never had entered a doubt into the head of 
Jimmie Tartuff, since first he set his wondering eyes 
on the Missing Link, as to its being just what the pro- 
fessor claimed. No mere monkey, some of which 
he had seen at the circus, could do the things that 
Zip did. The professor’s lecture, it seemed to him, 
must carry conviction to all who heard, so plainly 
did he point out Zip’s superiority over every variety 
of apes, and also his slight inferiority to man. 
Jimmie lay awake a long time that night thinking 
of the lecture, Zip, the great prowess shown by the 
professor in his capture; but most of all what a finan- 
cial snap the professor had in Zip. 

“Why,” thought Jimmie, “that must have been a 
fifty dollar house to-night; the money just rolled in. 
I wouldn’t mind owning a Missing Link myself; 
besides making scads of money on him, I could train 
him to black my shoes and go after the cow. Why, 
120 


THE MISSING LINK 


Zip could be taught to do anything; he’d be as good 
as a hired man.” 

Then suddenly a mighty thought struck Jimmie 
Tartuff — struck him so squarely that he gave a great 
jump. An idea had come to him, which, if carried 
out would revolutionize modern life. If there were 
one Missing Link, there were surely more. Why 
should they not be utilized to do the manual labor 
of mankind? This certainty must have been the 
purpose of their creation. 

At first the scheme did not unfold itself to Jimmie 
Tartuff in all its magnitude, but only in those direc- 
tions in which the strife between capital and labor 
had come within his personal horizon. His first 
thought was that the hired girl problem was solved. 
He had suffered much, himself, from this universal 
perplexity, and had more than once been obliged to 
do many distasteful and humiliating household tasks, 
because of fickle maids’ desertion of his mother’s 
kitchen. A Missing Link would make a perfect 
servant girl. It would always know its place, be- 
cause it would not know any better than to do so; 
it would never want a day off, or a raise in wages, 
for the same reason, and you could talk of anything 
before it. A Missing Link maid could never gossip 
to the girl next door about the family affairs of her 
employer. 

Slowly he began to realize that in his mind were 
1 2 1 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


working the germs of the solution of the great ques- 
tion of capital and labor, though he realized that 
many years must be spent in perfecting his system. 
And then, when many generations of constant associ- 
ation with mankind were passed away, and the Miss- 
ing Link had been thereby uplifted past that mys- 
terious point which separated it from mankind and 
became human fully, by that time would not the 
next order, the higher branch of the ape family, be 
fitted to take its place as the handmen and handmaid- 
ens of mankind? And man would have nothing in 
the world to do but boss and have fun. 

Vaguely at first these ideas floated through the 
mind of Jimmie Tartuff ; then gradually they began 
to shape themselves into practical form. Why could 
not he introduce to mankind this great boon? It 
would mean a fortune for him, and untold blessing 
to the rest of mankind. Such a hold did this great 
scheme take on the soul of Jimmie that had it not 
been for the shrewd Yankee blood in his veins — 
just now coursing at a galloping rate — he needs must 
have sprung from his bed and rushed to the street 
and proclaimed his great discovery to the world, 
after the manner of Archimedes; but, instead, he lay 
still and carefully thought out a plan of action. Like 
most great discoverers, Jimmie felt himself sorely 
crippled for want of means and sadly in need of a 
patron; and who should sooner suggest himself to his 
122 



He needs must have sprung from his bed. 

123 




THE MISSING LINK 


mind as such than the professor? It did not seem to 
Jimmie that it would be unreasonable to expect him 
to furnish both means and experience to offset so 
brilliant a scheme, and be willing to go even part- 
ners. 

At the same time there was another citizen of 
Shanetown lying awake and pondering over Pro- 
fessor Ferrin and the Missing Link. It was Rever- 
end Bean, the venerable pastor of the one church at 
Shanetown. His heart was filled with righteous in- 
dignation. For many years this good old man had 
toiled among the people of Shanetown, and it grieved 
him sore that they should by their patronage counte- 
nance this minister of Satan — for such he considered 
Professor Ferrin — who was sowing among them the 
heretical and pernicious doctrine of evolution. His 
soul was kindled against this man who was leading 
the people astray, and against this people who were 
wont to plead poverty when he asked for more lib- 
eral contributions to church and mission funds, but 
who wasted their substance thus in riotous living 
— for as nothing else could he regard attending the 
lecture and the exhibitions of the professor and Zip. 

The result of his meditations was that the next 
morning Reverend Bean gave his congregation what 
some of them called a “raking” on the subject. Rev- 
erend Bean believed Zip to be no more than a very 
intelligent ape, and that he was no more wonderful 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


than many horses, dogs, elephants, and other animals 
whose remarkable doings were on record; he told 
his congregation so, and that this ignorant and 
presumptuous man was working on their credulity, 
corrupting the minds of the youths and sowing among 
them seeds of atheism. 

These words were duly reported to Professor Fer- 
rin early Sunday afternoon — as he and Zip were giv- 
ing a reception to a few privileged — among them 
Jimmie Tartuff, almost bursting with his glorious 
ideas which had been growing all day and which 
he had not yet been able to confide to the professor, 
because of having to attend church and Sunday 
school in the morning. 

Professor Ferrin’s indignation against Reverend 
Bean rose fearfully as he thought of the injury his 
words were likely to do his business. His great 
success in Shanetown had made him plan to stay 
there several days more. The people were sociable, 
and he had made some most congenial acquaintances. 
He swore that he would make the old fogy preacher 
prove his words about Zip being only an ape or else 
make to himself a public apology. 

“He’s no more an ape than the old back number is 
himself,” said the professor. “Zip couldn’t make 
such a monkey of himself as he has, if he tried. Any 
one who knows the first thing about ethnology can 
see that Zip is no kind of an ape. The old man is 
126 


THE MISSING LINK 


just exposing his ignorance. Gentlemen, I am as 
sure that Zip is the true Missing Link as I am that 
I’m alive. I’ve seen scores of trained orang-outangs, 
gorillas, and all kinds of apes, and I’ve never seen 
one that could hold a candle to Zip for intelligence. 
Now, boys, just come forward and examine his skull 
and see for yourselves that he belongs to no monkey 
family in existence.” 

Thus encouraged, the crowd gathered around Zip 
and began to feel his head, observe the movements of 
his joints, and take liberties with various parts of 
his anatomy. But even a Missing Link may have 
some feeling of personal rights, and Zip after a while 
resented these things. He uttered a low guttural 
sound of protest, and pulling himself away, retreated 
sullenly to a corner of the hall. 

“Come here, you rascal,” said the professor, but 
Zip did not move, and his owner then attempted to 
pull him out of the corner. The Missing Link had 
made up his mind that he would put an end to this 
foolishness so he pulled himself away and there was 
an ugly gleam in his little black eyes. Zip’s resist- 
ance was a new thing to Professor Ferrin and made 
him furiously angry. The preacher’s attack on his 
knowledge and veracity had put him in a most 
touchy frame of mind, and it seemed to him now 
that Zip’s unwillingness to allow his statements to 
be verified were a reflection on their genuineness. 
127 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


“I’ll show you who is boss here,” yelled he, as he 
picked up a poker from the rusty old stove and went 
after Zip again. 

Zip’s eyes now glared frightfully — so frightfully 
that Jimmie Tartuff trembled at the thought of try- 
ing to capture such beings — and he made a spring 
at the professor, who, now thoroughly scared, jumped 
aside and at the same time aimed a frantic blow at 
the head of his adversary. It must have struck him 
fairly on the weakest part of a Missing Link’s skull, 
for Zip sank to the floor with a piteous wail, writhed 
for a moment and then lay dead. 

******* 

The next morning Jimmie Tartuff’s mother went 
to the milliner’s shop to select a new bonnet. She 
was going to Renwick, Wednesday, to attend the dis- 
trict W.C.T.U. convention, and make her report as 
superintendent of the department of mercy. Birds 
and feathers were all the rage this year, which made 
it a hard matter for Mrs. Tartuff and the milliner to 
agree on anything. Ostrich plumes her conscience 
allowed her to wear since she had understood they 
were pulled out gently, but they did not suit the 
modest little bonnet she had chosen. The milliner 
thought that nothing but a bird would answer, ex- 
cept it might be rosettes of orange or magenta vel- 
vet, at which Mrs. Tartuff’s soul revolted. 

128 


THE MISSING LINK 


“Then you will just have to have a bird, Mrs. 
Tartuff,” said the milliner; “they are on all the styl- 
ish hats this year.” 

Mrs. Tartuff looked over the trimmings in per- 
plexity. Everything was birds, wings, feathers, or 
perhaps, a bird’s head grotesquely attached to a large 
tail-feather or two. Her heart rose in indignation. 
“I simply could not appear at the convention wear- 
ing a bird. You know I am superintendent of the 
department of mercy. I think it’s a sin and a 
shame,” said she, “that milliners encourage this 
awful cruelty by offering such things to their cus- 
tomers.” 

This fired the milliner up: “We have to keep 
what the people want,” she said. “It seems to me it 
would be more credit to your society, if instead of 
trying to ruin a poor woman’s business, you would 
bring to justice that showman who killed the poor, 
helpless brute at the town hall yesterday. There 
were pretty goings on there for Sunday afternoon, 
and your own boy was there, Mrs. Tartuff.” 

These plain remarks staggered Mrs. Tartuff. 
She had had the doings of her son thrown in her teeth 
before; especially the evening he had terrorized the 
town by dressing up to represent the devil, while 
she was leading the mother’s meeting. No one knew 
how much care she gave to the training of her son, 
and no one seemed to give her credit for giving him 
129 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


any attention at all, but seemed to roll his misdeeds 
into her path, blockading whatever good work she 
attempted. Finally, she controlled her feelings 
enough to say: “But, Mrs. Brent, we can do noth- 
ing now. The poor creature, whatever it was, is 
dead, and past its suffering now. The council ought 
never to have let him have the town hall.” 

“You could make an example of him, at least,” 
said Mrs. Brent, “and show where your society stands 
in these matters, and that it will not tolerate such 
outrageous carryings on.” 

And that was the little leaven that raised a peck 
of troubles around Professor Ferrin. Mrs. Tartuff 
carried her perplexities to her pastor and to her 
friends, and that evening, just as he was about to 
leave Shanetown after having interred Zip with 
fitting rites and Jimmie Tartuff as chief mourner, 
Professor Ferrin was arrested on the charge of 
cruelty to animals. 

The tragic death of Zip had caused a sensation 
in Shanetown, and the arrest augmented it into al- 
most an ecstasy. Nothing else was spoken or even 
dreamed of ; but everybody was trying to settle in his 
own mind and the mind of his neighbor the true 
status of Zip under the law. 

Mr. Podunk, who claimed to be the best read per- 
son in Shanetown and to have the most philosophical 
mind, was convinced Zip had been the real Miss- 
130 


THE MISSING LINK 

in g Link, and that consequently his slayer deserved a 
severer punishment than that imposed as a penalty 
for cruelty to animals. He thought Reverend Bean 
and the women, though doubtless acting from 
the best of motives, had made a mistake, and that 
here was a case with which the laws of the state were 
inadequate to deal, since Zip could not be classed 
decisively as either brute or human. 

On the other hand Mrs. Podunk was thoroughly 
convinced that Zip was a man, because of the human 
way in which he chewed tobacco and spit out the 
juice. 

Jimmie Tartuff heard Mr. Podunk give expres- 
sion to his convictions in the grocery Monday eve- 
ning. The trials of the professor had revealed to 
Jimmie a new obstacle to his great enterprise, and 
sleep again forsook his pillow. On his mind 
weighed the thought of the great responsibility 
which the expansion of his great scheme would bring, 
and the complications which might arise therefrom; 
he tried to call to mind something that might serve 
as a precedent in regard to the status under the law 
of such beings as were neither decisively human nor 
brute, but a combination of the two. 

He had read of centaurs, but history seemed 
strangely silent as to their civil rights. Of mer- 
maids and mermen he could recall nothing more 
definite; and thinking of these brought to Jimmie’s 

131 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


mind Undine, whose story he had read; and al- 
though her sudden acquisition of a soul was made 
under circumstances far too romantic and peculiar 
for Jimmie Tartuff to give it credence, yet it brought 
to his mind another and more startling idea. There 
must come a point in the development of every Miss- 
ing Link when he shall cease to be a Missing Link 
and become a human being; a human being with the 
rights which make him impossible as an investment. 
And who should be able to say just when that would 
be reached? 

As Jimmie reflected on the lack of knowledge in 
these matters possessed by his generation, and what 
complications might arise therefrom in the carrying 
out of his great purpose, it seemed to him he was 
living a century before his time. 

And as if in fulfillment of the forebodings of the 
night, Jimmie learned the next morning that the 
charge of cruelty to animals had been withdrawn 
and Professor Ferrin was now charged with murder. 
Then like Joan of Arc, the professor became an apos- 
tate and repudiated his former faith. Imagine the 
feelings of Jimmie Tartuff as he sat that same day in 
the office of the justice of the peace where he had 
been summoned as a witness, and heard the professor 
protest that Zip was only a trained ape which had 
been a part of the great hippodrome show of Moon 
Brothers, and which, on the disbanding of the show 
132 


THE MISSING LINK 


on account of financial distress, he had taken in pay- 
ment for his services as clown. Thus suppliantly, 
and even with tears, he spake, who so lately had 
sworn vengeance on Reverend Bean for expressing 
his belief of some such thing. And Jimmie Tartuff 
had applauded his manly indignation. 

On investigation this last statement of Professor 
Ferrin proved to be true, and after several days’ de- 
tention he was permitted to shake the dust of Shane- 
town from his feet, much to the chagrin of Reverend 
Bean and the W.C.T.U., who had been persuaded 
to withdraw their charge by persons who claimed to 
be posted in matters of law, and who had assured 
them that the professor’s own statements must con- 
vict him of manslaughter, since he had so vehemently 
asserted that Zip was no ape and must therefore be 
a man, no more of a freak than the wild men of 
Borneo. 

Zip sleeps in peace upon the lonely hillside near 
Shanetown, but his works live after him, whether 
for good or evil, — in the Darwin Doubt Debaters’ 
Club, where every week great questions are settled 
beyond dispute. But Jimmie Tartuff, that Hamlet 
made impotent by the very immensity of his ideas, 
is clerking in a grocery store. 


133 



THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 





THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 



FIGHT in Sunday school! On the way home 


1 1. the little girls gathered on the street corners 
and in scandalized tones told each other what an 
awful thing it was, and how they were nearly fright- 
ened to death. They looked at Samuel when he 
passed as though he were some monstrous thing. 

He cared not a cent about that; but marched past 
them leading his little sister by the hand, and looked 
neither to the right nor to the left. He was not going 
to have her imposed on, though he had to fight every 
boy in the school, and was dragged to jail for it. 
The Lord had sent him this little sister to love and 
protect, and he was going to do it. He had the con- 
sciousness of rectitude to uphold him; and, besides, 
his teacher had stood by him, and right before every- 
body she had laid her hand on his head, — which 
was really the most embarrassing thing of the whole 
performance — and had said she liked to see a boy 
who was good to his sister. 

This was how it came about. It was little sister’s 
first day at Sunday school, and she had refused to 
go into the class with the littlest ones, because she 
could not be separated from Samuel, so he had been 


137 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


obliged to take her into the boy’s class. His teacher 
had welcomed her gladly and inquired her name, and 
he had remembered to give her Sunday one of Julia, 
instead of her every-day one of “Old Yule,” which, 
originated by Uncle Dorie, clung to her in spite of 
the remonstrances of her mother. 

Miss Gregg had placed Julia on a chair where she 
sat between her brother and Harvey Doble, her feet 
sticking straight out in front and her new slippers 
shining like little looking glasses. And then it was 
that the sight of her little fat legs, clad in blue stock- 
ings, tempted Harvey Doble to try the effect of stick- 
ing a pin in them. 

The effect was all he could have desired. A pierc- 
ing shriek rent the air and interrupted Samuel as he 
was triumphantly winding up the golden text, “If a 
man smite you on one cheek, turn to him the other 
also.” 

“He stuck a pin in your little sister,” said Johnny 
Winters. “I saw him.” 

The text said nothing about what to do in case 
anyone should attack your little sister, but there was 
no need that it should. Samuel knew what to do, 
and before his teacher could interfere, he gave Har- 
vey Doble such a knock that both Harvey and the 
chair on which he sat tumbled over backward. 

It was the most sensational thing that Sunday 
school had ever known. Girls shrieked and hid 

138 


THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 


their faces in their hands, and the superintendent 
came to see what was the matter. He talked gravely 
to the boys about the heinousness of jabbing little 
girls with pins and about the depravity of fighting. 
Then it was, because the superintendent seemed to 
blame one as much as the other, that Samuel’s teacher 
had defended him; and afterwards when his mother 
told her how the affair had grieved her, Miss Gregg 
had declared that Samuel was all right, and a chiv- 
alrous little boy, and she admired him, though of 
course she could not uphold fighting before the other 
children. His father, too, had laughed when he 
heard of it, and told him that was right, and not to 
let anyone impose on Julia. 

But one cannot always live at the top notch. Liv- 
ing with a person all the time is a very different thing 
from defending her as occasion arises. No doubt 
the home lives of those knights of old were very dif- 
ferent from the ideas we get of them riding forth ar- 
rayed for battle in the redress of the wrongs of fair 
ones, wearing their colors on their sleeves. It may 
be that after they had won these ladies and taken off 
their fighting clothes and settled down to making a 
living, they quarreled like everything. 

Anyway, though Samuel was very fond of his lit- 
tle sister, he had long since discovered she was not 
such an unmixed blessing as he had once supposed. 
139 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


He had learned even at the early age of seven that 
we must take the bitter with the sweet. 

Years ago, in his first spasm of rapture over her 
acquisition, he had expressed a wish for a thousand 
little sisters, but since then he had modified his de- 
sires. A little sister lying asleep in bed all day long, 
and whom you are only permitted to gaze on at long 
intervals, is a very different proposition from one 
who cries to go with you wherever you may go and 
whom your mother often leaves entirely to your 
care. 

Heavens! what if his parents had gratified his rash 
wish. A thousand little sisters to wait for and to 
pick up when they fell continuously. Think of wip- 
ing the tears and dirt from a thousand little faces, 
and quieting the sobs of a thousand little mouths. 
Think of a thousand spoons contending with his in 
the crock to which clung such scanty scrapings of 
the remains of the cake batter. Think of a thousand 
little girls bursting into loud lamentations if he 
chanced to chase a cat or throw a stone at a dog — 
for the heart of Julia was of wondrous tenderness. 

That poor little bothersome tender heart! The 
whole family was forced into a conspiracy to keep 
it unlacerated by grief. She remonstrated if a fly 
was disturbed in eating its dinner from the sugar 
bowl ; the catching of a mouse was kept from her as a 
guilty secret, and the corpse was removed by stealth ; 

140 



Miss Gregg had said Samuel was a chivalrous little bog. 

141 



THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 


the stories of Red Riding-Hood or of the Babes in 
the Wood had to be revised so as to end happily, 
else she greeted the denouement with sobs. Poor 
little tender hearted sister, who loved every creeping 
thing and played happily with a caterpillar till all 
its furry clothes came off, and wept when she was 
forced to give it up, and who, when Buster Brown’s 
Tige was left one Sunday sprawling half way up the 
ladder into the haymow, piteously importuned every 
member of the family in turn to go uptown and res- 
cue him from his perilous position. 

Then, too, eternal vigilance is the price of your 
property, even when there is only one little sister in 
the family. Think of a thousand fell destroyers of 
your toys and books — a thousand to whom you must 
surrender them or be exhorted thus, “Oh, don’t be 
selfish with your little sisters, let them have your 
toys,” and if you murmur or complain at their de- 
struction you are comforted thus, “You should keep 
your things out of their reach if you don’t want them 
destroyed — your little sisters are nothing but babies.” 

Samuel was a boy of many affairs and of varied 
interests. He could not devote all his time to guard- 
ing his treasures, and that is how it came that Julia 
got his animal book. It was his most cherished pos- 
session, and almost the only thing he had that he 
was never told to give to her. Uncle Dorie had 
given it to him last Christmas and it was full of the 
H3 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


most wonderful pictures of animals of many colors. 
It was his custom to look at it only when she was 
away or in bed, and thus it was saved the marks of 
any dirty fingers except his own, which did not look 
bad. But this day John Winters was there and 
Samuel was showing it to him, and while they were 
looking at it they heard an organ-grinder outside 
and followed him down the street a little way, all 
unmindful that they had left the animal book on the 
floor in the parlor. 

When an hour later, Samuel came home he re- 
membered it and rushed into the room. There it 
lay still on the floor, and there on her stomach be- 
fore it was his little sister. The book was open at 
the picture of the Royal Bengal tiger, gorgeous in 
his black and yellow stripes against the green back- 
ground of a jungle, and with his mouth open to 
devour a calf which he held beneath his paws. He 
had been the proudest thing in the book. 

But he was proud no longer. The royal beast no 
longer had his mouth stretched for his prey, for his 
head had been entirely destroyed by the persistent 
rubbing of the wet fingers of Julia, and in its place 
was only a dirty blur of paper with here and there a 
pasty little roll. 

Samuel’s little sister looked up with a quick glance 
of guilt. 


144 


THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 


“He was going to eat the little moo,” she said, 
with a piteous droop of the lips. 

An awful fury seized upon the soul of Samuel. 
All the wrongs he had ever suffered at the hands of 
his sister seemed culminated in this crushing blow, 
and all the anger he had ever felt against her 
culminated in this crowning rage. This was how 
she had repaid his years of devotion and self-sacri- 
fice! Since she had destroyed the pride of his heart, 
a savage desire moved him to vent his wrath on her 
most precious possession. Had he a definite purpose 
to destroy her fatal beauty? Anyway he grabbed 
his sister by the hair — that flaxen poll the loveliness 
of which he had heard many women rave over! 

And then, amid her shrieks, as he stood there still 
grasping in his hand a few tell-tale hairs, his mother 
opened the parlor door, ushering in Miss Gregg, who 
was bringing him a speech for children’s day. 


145 



THE SARAHSVILLE FAIR 





THE SARAHSVILLE FAIR 


I HAIN’T been a place for two years,” said Mrs. 

Kenyon in a voice that trembled with eagerness, 
“not a solitary place.” 

“Well,” said her husband, dryly, “the Sarahsville 
fair is a mighty poor place to begin with.” 

“And last year,” she continued, “you said to wait 
till this year. It’s been the same thing ever since we 
were married. You’ve always put me off with one 
thing or another and we never used to miss it when 
I was at home.” 

“You made a mistake by not stayin’ there,” said 
he, still more dryly; then, warming up, “I’ve told 
you that to-morrow is the only day I can spare to go 
and look at them steers. I’ve no time to go galli- 
vantin’ over the country just for fun. And what on 
earth you want to go to the Sarahsville fair for I 
can’t see. All you’d see would be a glass of jelly 
and a coon or two.” 

“I’d see lots of old friends from home, anyway, 
and everybody said the fair was real good last year.” 

Mrs. Kenyon spoke in the hopeless tone of one 
who realizes she is arguing against fate. For a few 
moments she busied herself about the supper table, 
149 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


which she was setting in the big kitchen. Her hus- 
band sat by the window with the newspaper before 
him, which he had not lowered as he replied to his 
wife. Eight year old Bob was helping his mother 
by restraining his two little sisters from pilfering 
cheese and cookies from the table. 

Presently Mrs. Kenyon’s face began to twitch, and 
she picked up the baby from the floor, interrupting 
its exploration of the coal bucket, and having drawn 
the ham she was frying to the back of the stove, left 
the room. She came back in a few moments and 
took up the supper, which was eaten in silence, Bob 
glancing furtively at his mother’s face from time to 
time. 

The next day Mr. Kenyon kept Bob out of school 
to go with him to look at the steers. Not that he 
was expected to do any of the looking, but in case a 
purchase was made, he would be useful to help drive 
them home. But the owner of the steers was not at 
home. He had taken his family and gone to the fair, 
the hired man said. They went to the field and 
looked at the bunch of cattle, and then got into the 
buggy again and rode away. For two or three miles 
Mr. Kenyon was thinking of the cattle and did not 
speak. Then he said: “Bob, how would you like 
to go to the fair?” 

“All right,” said Bob. And they went, though it 
took them ten miles out of the way. 

150 


THE SARAHSVILLE FAIR 


Bob was surprised to find there were other things 
at the fair besides the glass of jelly and the coons, 
although he could see nothing absurd in going 
ten miles to see a good coon. For a while he could 
only stare in dumb wonder at the magnificence of the 
display. Then suddenly he thought of his mother 
and how she had wished to come; and now while his 
father and he were here, she was working in the hot 
kitchen at home. He thought of how she had told 
a neighbor that they all expected to go in the spring 
wagon and take their dinners. He had not realized 
her disappointment before, because he had never seen 
the glories of the fair; but now as he thought of it, 
a big lump came into his throat, and for a while the 
sights were somewhat dimmed. Then he saw a man 
with performing rats, and for a while he forgot all, 
even his own existence. But, late in the afternoon, 
when they were again in the buggy, he remembered 
his mother once more. 

His father was in the happy state of mind said to 
be engendered by a good conscience. His joviality 
amid his acquaintances at the fair had been a revela- 
tion to his son, who for the first time saw him in a 
different light than a dispenser of authority. He 
had treated the boy to lemonade and bought him 
sandwiches and scalloped cakes for his dinner, and to 
all this munificence added a bag of peanuts just be- 
fore they started home. He flipped the whip lightly 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


over the backs of the horses and whistled softly with 
a satisfied air. He had seen the owner of the steers 
and had bought them right, and his meditations were 
serene. 

After a while he roused himself and turned to 
Bob: “Well, son,” said he, “and how did you like 
the fair?” 

“All right,” said Bob. Then he added slowly, 
“Ma would have liked it.” 

The silence that followed was the most embarrass- 
ing and oppressive that little Bob had ever known. 
He was overwhelmed when he thought of his bold- 
ness, as, led on by his father’s sociability, out of 
the fullness of his heart his mouth had spoken. 

Dismayed and silent, yet still sorrowful for his 
mother, little Bob travelled an uneasy road. For the 
first time it dawned upon him that the rebuker as 
well as the rebuked may feel uncomfortable. No 
further remarks were exchanged between them until 
they were driving into the barnyard at home. Then 
Mr. Kenyon said: 

“There’s no use sayin’ anything to your ma about 
bein’ to the fair. Just keep it to yourself, do you 
hear?” 

“All right,” said Bob, meekly. But his heart 
smote him afresh when he went into the house and 
found his mother had made biscuit and sugar mo- 
lasses for supper. 

\ 


152 



He could only stare in dumb wonder at the magnificence 
of the display . 


153 




















* 
















\ 

V 


THE SARAHSVILLE FAIR 


Keeping the secret was hard work, for the boy. It 
would have been a keen delight to tell his mother all 
he had seen. He had not yet attained to that in- 
tellectual plane where none other can partake of our 
joys and sorrows. But he dared not mention it even 
to his sisters, and was thereby compelled to forego 
a gratifying sense of importance. An awful dread 
haunted him lest his mother should ask him some 
questions concerning his whereabouts on the day they 
had gone to the fair, that would compel him either 
to lie or disregard his father’s wish. He longed to 
consult him as to what he should do if placed in this 
extremity, but shrank from reopening a subject un- 
pleasant to both. 

Added to these things was the thought that perhaps 
his mother would so much enjoy hearing him tell 
of the fair that she would forget her disappoint- 
ment; but he did not know; perhaps, it would only 
bring it the more vividly to mind. So Bob could not 
be quite sure his silence was contributing anything to 
her piece of mind. 

One evening six weeks later, the Kenyon family 
was gathered around the sitting-room fire. Bob was 
lying on the rug, looking at the pictures in a copy 
of Burns’ poems. His mother had won the book at 
a spelling match years ago and it was usually on the 
shelf above the sewing machine, along with a few 
155 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


other volumes that made up their library; but to- 
night it had fallen down when Bob stood on a chair 
to get a primer for one of the little girls, and had 
opened at a picture of the witches’ dance in “Tam 
O’Shanter.” He tried to read about it, but finally 
gave it up and took the book to his mother. She 
began, stumbling over the Scotch almost as much as 
Bob had done, but he would not let her stop. Pres- 
ently she came to plain sailing: 


“But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; 
Or like the snowfall in the river, 

A moment white, — then melts forever; 
Or like the borealis race, 

That flit ere you can point their place; 
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm. 

Nae man can tether time or tide ” 


Her husband laid down the “Veterinary Surgeon” 
and listened. As she went on all three forgot every- 
thing else in the attempt to wrest the story from the 
stubborn Scotch. Bob leaned tight against his moth- 
er’s knee and listened with all his senses; and when 
finally Maggie’s tail went by the board, he ex- 
claimed : 

“Was she an old grey mare with a baldface?” 

“I suppose so,” said his mother. 

“And just a weenty stump of her tail left?” 

156 


THE SARAHSVILLE FAIR 


“Yes,” said she. 

“Well, sir,” said Bob, in his excitement forgetting 
both his father’s admonition and his mother’s hurt, 
“I saw that very horse at the Sarahsville fair!” 



GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 



GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


T HE first time George saw Stella was at the 
Soul Symposium. Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne was 
one of the wealthy patrons of George’s father, who 
was a doctor. She was also a charter member of the 
Soul Symposium. She was a great many other 
things too, but they have nothing to do with the story. 

Mrs. Coral Flynn was the founder of the Soul 
Symposium. They were spiritualists, but Mrs. 
Coral Flynn was a platform and not a test medium. 
There was as much difference between a common 
medium who moves tables and Mrs. Flynn as there 
is between a darkey camp meeting in Arkansas and 
a staid Presbyterian church in Boston. 

Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne was devoted to her doc- 
tor, and sincerely desired that his soul might be 
opened to higher truths. No one, she was sure, could 
hear Mrs. Coral Flynn and not be profoundly im- 
pressed — that is, one of intelligence — and she had at 
last persuaded Dr. Ross to come and hear her; or 
rather the spirit which used her as a medium of ex- 
change. 

Now, since George’s mother died, there was no 
person on earth whose society his father enjoyed as 
161 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


much as George’s. So he took George with him to 
the Soul Symposium. 

His father had asked him if he would like to go 
to church, but to George it did not seem like a church 
at all. It was only a large room in a tall building 
like the one where his father’s downtown office was, 
and they went up in the elevator. George’s idea of 
church was the old country meeting-house with the 
gravestones around it — and among them his moth- 
er’s — where he went in the summer with his Aunt 
Lucy, where they sung Psalms and the preacher 
talked so long that the carvings at the bottom of the 
pillars turned to faces that grinned at George. 

The elegance of Mrs. Coral Flynn held George’s 
attention for a while. She wore a shiny black dress 
with a long train, and with white lined wings reach- 
ing from her shoulders to the floor, which made 
George wonder if she flew from place to place. She 
spoke dreamily of the occult and esoteric, the infini- 
verse and the sacred Brahm, none of which were in 
George’s reader, so after a while he began to lose 
interest in her talk and to look around. 

Then it was he first saw Stella. She was seated 
in a chair on the platform behind Mrs. Coral 
Flynn. George did not know then that she was 
Stella. He did not think of her as having a name 
at all, as his first thought was that she might pos- 
sibly be an angel. She was a year or two older than 


GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


he, and was dressed all in white and had fluffy flaxen 
hair around her shoulders. He could not see whether 
she had wings or not, but supposed likely she had 
small ones started. 

When the service ended, Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne 
came up and asked Dr. Ross if he did not think Mrs. 
Coral Flynn wonderful. 

“She is completely unconscious while she is on 
the platform,” she said. “But now she is herself 
again. I must introduce you to her.” 

So George and his father were presented to Mrs. 
Coral Flynn and to her little daughter, Miss Stella. 
As they went out George heard Mrs. E. Bagley 
Sterne telling his father what a remarkable child 
Stella was. She had inherited her mother’s spiritual 
gift, but, they believed, in even a more marked de- 
gree. 

“But,” said Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne, “I have not 
time now to tell you what are the hopes of the Soul 
Symposium for Stella. I will tell you more of her 
some other time.” 

The next time George saw Stella was almost a year 
afterward, when he had almost forgotten her. As 
he came running from school one afternoon with a 
troop of boys, they saw a great crowd of people on 
the corner. This was the place where the Rev. 
Stoner, who knew exactly when the world was com- 
ing to an end, preached every once in a while. 

163 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


Usually there did not very many people stop to hear 
him, but to-day the people were all pushing each 
other as if there might be a fight. 

George could squirm through a crowd without a 
bit of trouble, and that is what he was doing when 
he came face to face with Stella. A tall young 
woman with short, curly hair, was dragging her 
through the crowd, and it was hard work, because 
every one was trying to get near enough to see her. 
She was slimmer and whiter than when George had 
seen her before, and her eyes looked very big and 
frightened ; but she was dressed in white, as before, 
with her fluffy hair hanging down. 

After the woman and little girl were gone a good 
many of the people lost interest in the Rev. Stoner’s 
talk and began to go away, and then the boy heard 
those who had been close enough to see and hear 
what was going on, tell the ones who had not, what 
was the matter. 

They said the Rev. Stoner had stopped the little 
girl as she was walking past with the woman and 
told her she was possessed of a demon, and that he 
had tried to cast it out of her but failed, because she 
wouldn’t tell him anything he asked her. 

George had heard before many strange things of 
the Rev. Stoner— that he could tell demons, and that 
when he saw a person who had one he was afraid 
164 


GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


at first, but afterwards he could sometimes cast them 
out. 

One time he had seen one that looked like a rooster 
and another time one that looked like an ugly black 
dwarf. At least this was what the boys said. 
George’s idea was that the possessed persons carried 
the demons hid in their pockets, and the Rev. 
Stoner conjured them out into sight, somewhat after 
the manner of Mr. Herman when he took live things 
out of his hat. If Sammy had tried to explain his 
idea of what a demon was, it would have borne a re- 
markable resemblance to a live Jack-in-the-box. But 
it seemed to him the Rev. Stoner must surely be mis- 
taken as to Stella Flynn having her demon with her, 
as she looked so very thin it seemed impossible she 
could have concealed it about her. 

That evening Dr. Ross was summoned in great 
haste to the home of Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne, which 
was only a few block from his own. There he found 
that remarkable child, Stella Flynn, in convulsions. 
And when finally two hours later, he had gotten the 
child asleep, he had another patient on his hands. 
Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne collapsed under a nervous 
chill brought on by her anxiety over Stella. The 
mother had several months before passed to that 
country where spirits are more in harmony with 
their environments than here, and had left the child 
as a sacred charge to Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne. 

165 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


The next day, as Dr. Ross was leaving after a visit 
to these patients, the tall young woman with the short 
curly hair followed him down the stairs, mysteri- 
ously motioned him into the parlor, shut the door, 
and in tragic whispers unburdened her soul to him. 
She first told him of the monstrous conduct of that 
madman, the Rev. Stoner, and asked the doctor to 
see that he was placed under restraint. He had 
called her herself an emissary of Satan, and had 
told her she was destroying the soul of the child. 
She had not dared mention him to Mrs. E. Bagley 
Sterne because of her peculiar sensitive nervous or- 
ganization. 

Then she spoke of other things to him, and at 
great length. She was one learned in theosophical 
lore and had, in India, sat for years at the feet of a 
man who was such an adept in occult and astral sci- 
ence, that after following his teachings for a few 
months one would look upon his former self with 
a feeling akin to horror. 

Celestial laws had brought her and Mrs. Coral 
Flynn, kindred souls, together, and they had col- 
laborated with great care a course of study for Stella, 
which she was still carrying out as the departing wish 
of the mother. She was no ordinary child. She 
had known it the first time she saw her. Of Stella’s 
destiny there could be no doubt, — the horoscope con- 
166 


GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


firmed the revelations to the mother, — but perhaps 
they in their eagerness had interfered too much. 

The mother’s teaching to the Soul Symposium had 
long been that the world is now approaching the 
sixth of the twelve Messianic cycles. And was it not 
known to those to whom these things had been re- 
vealed that the next sublime soul to bless the earth 
with its presence was to appear in feminine form? 
These things were known only to a few select souls, 
but they were not confined to those of any one sect. 
Great souls of different races and religions came by 
different paths to the same truths. She had been 
with the child daily now for two years, and though, 
usually a very quiet child, she sometimes spoke words 
of strange wisdom. So pure was her nature that 
might it not be that the divine light, shattered to 
all the colors of the rainbow, as seen through the im- 
perfections of humanity, would show pure white 
again through her? 

The doctor began to be interested in the spiritual 
state of little Miss Flynn. He concluded he would 
go and give the Rev. Stoner a piece of his mind any- 
way. But he carried away more of the mind of that 
reverend gentleman than he left of his own. 

The fact of modern spiritualism could no longer 
be doubted. It was no delusion, but an awful real- 
ity, said the Rev. Stoner, the possession of humanity 
by demons. Yes, he had the gift of discerning spir- 
167 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


its and had even been able a few times to cast them 
out. But he had never seen a case of as perfect pos- 
session as that of the Flynn child. He had no doubt, 
as she was evidently a very delicate child, that it 
would cost her her life. As to the convulsions which 
the doctor accused him of causing, they were the 
work of the demon which possessed the child, though 
he did not doubt that his words had disturbed the 
demon so much as to cause this manifestation of its 
uneasiness. But as for his words, they had been 
given him of the Holy Ghost to speak, and it was 
not for him to consider the consequences. Then the 
Rev. Stoner described to Dr. Ross the difference be- 
tween the Pythonic demon or spirit of divination, 
which had possession of little Miss Flynn, and the 
Nephilim which were about to descend again upon 
the earth with all manner of evil results, in this 
the time of the end. 

The doctor went away feeling that any action 
against this earnest man would be regarded by him 
as a persecution to be desired, and would only fire 
him with renewed zeal more destructive than ever 
to nervous little girls. All the way home he thought 
on these things he had heard to-day and when he 
reached his own door, he gave a long whistle. 

“Yes,” said he to himself, “Voltaire was right 
when he advised the devil, when he wished to impose 
168 


GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


on mankind, to address himself to theology and not 
to physics.” 

One Saturday afternoon about two weeks after- 
ward, George’s father came home and asked him if 
he would like to go with him to see a patient. 
George was trying to give his kite more rope by 
many plies of white thread, Number 70, which was 
all the string he could find. The thread for some 
reason kept getting tangled and George was discour- 
aged and was glad to go. 

“Is your dying pig all right yet?” asked his father. 

“Yes,” said George. 

“Well, then, put it in your pocket,” said his father. 

They went to Mrs. E. Bagley Sterne’s, and here 
George saw Stella for the third time. She was sit- 
ting propped up in bed, and her eyes looked very 
bright. 

“I have brought my little boy to see you,” said 
Dr. Ross. “George, perhaps the little girl would 
like to have you show her your pig while I talk to 
Mrs. Sterne a few minutes.” 

Then he took Mrs. Sterne out into the next room 
and George went up to the bed and took the pig out 
of his pocket. He did not feel quite at his ease, for 
it had occurred to him that possibly the demon might 
be under the bed and would grab his leg. The pig 
was not a pig at all when George took it out of his 
pocket, but only a very flimsy and shapeless piece of 
169 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


rubber with a few bits of pasteboard sticking to it. 
But when he put it to his lips and blew it up it 
swelled out into a very fat pig with pink paper ears. 
Then when he took it away from his mouth it 
squealed in a squeaky voice and slowly faded away 
until it was a piece of rubber again. 

The little girl laughed. “Do it again/’ she said. 
And George did it again, feeling more at his ease, 
as he had dropped his handkerchief when he had 
taken the pig out of his pockets, and took occasion 
while picking it up to look under the bed and see 
that there was nothing there. But presently another 
fear assailed George. His grandmother was always 
telling his father that he was not nearly careful 
enough lest George should take some contagious dis- 
ease, and she had inspired George with some of her 
distrust of his father’s prudence. 

“Have you got the diphtheria?” said he to Stella. 

“No,” said she. 

“Then what disease have you got?” he demanded. 

“I don’t know,” said she, “I am all wound up,” 
and she looked at George very mournfully indeed. 

For the life of him, George could not keep a re- 
lieved expression off his countenance, for he had 
never heard of this ailment as catching. But he 
felt very sorry for Stella, and that night he dreamed 
she was a spool of white thread, Number 70, and his 
170 





171 



GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


father was unwinding her, while she squealed like his 
dying pig. 

I do not know what Dr. Ross said to Mrs. E. Bag- 
ley Sterne and the tall young woman with the short, 
curly hair, but like Sam Slick he had a knowledge 
of human nature, and knew how to combine with it 
a liberal application of “soft sawder.” Also, fear 
for the child’s life had made these two women as 
wax in the hands of the doctor, for when, the first 
of May, he took George as usual down to his Aunt 
Lucy’s at the little country postoffice of Rural Dale, 
to spend the summer, the star of the Soul Symposium 
went with them. 

George had not forgotten the demon. He was 
consumed by an awful curiosity about it. Did 
Stella really have one? If so, where had she left 
it? How big was it? What did it really look like? 
But she did not mention it to him, and George was 
too much of a gentleman to pry into other persons’ 
affairs. Perhaps it was dead, and he knew you 
should not mention their dead friends to people un- 
less you are the preacher. 

Besides George felt that it would not be consid- 
ered just the proper thing for a little girl to have a 
demon, and a feeling of good will toward Stella 
kept him from mentioning to his father or his Aunt 
Lucy what he felt might prejudice them against her. 
Perhaps, if they knew it, they might even send her 
173 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


home, which he would be very sorry to have happen, 
as he liked Stella, admired and even envied her, 
for, in fact, George had a sneaking and unholy de- 
sire that he might even have a demon of his own. 

But there were a great many other things to think 
about at Aunt Lucy’s. There were the five Jones 
children next door. Aunt Lucy thought them per- 
fect little heathen, but had long since given up try- 
ing to keep George from playing with them. There 
was the big pasture lot, with the run, in which 
they waded and sailed boats of their own making — 
boats which bore a striking likeness to the pictures 
of Noah’s ark, and which could never be made not 
to leak. There was the wild buffalo which inhab- 
ited the pasture, and which was always having to 
be driven away from the smaller Jones children; but 
which, at milking time, was changed into the cow,. 
Bessie, that Aunt Lucy’s hired man milked, and doc- 
tored for a chronic state of hollow tail, by inserting 
salt and pepper into that appendage. Then next the 
pasture was the dense, wild, tropical forest of corn, 
where they were always losing each other, and from 
which they brought out green clothed babies with 
long silky hair. 

So, as the long summer days passed, those angels 
that continually see the face of our Father gave both 
the children so many things to occupy them that 
they had no time to remember the demon, except 
174 


GEORGE’S SPIRITUAL GIFT 


that George once or twice wondered how a girl who 
had familiarly associated with one could be so afraid 
of Harry Jones’ billy goat. 

One day about the first of September, Dr. Ross 
came down, unannounced, to Rural Dale, and Aunt 
Lucy sent him out to find the children for himself. 
He found them under the big willow beside the run, 
making a hearty meal of water and mud pies, from 
a very wabbly little table of George’s construction, 
Mary Jones’ headless doll among them, trying its 
best to look pleasant and as if it were enjoying the 
meal as much as anybody. 

Near the table was a stove, fearfully and wonder- 
fully made of sticks with a piece of sheet iron for a 
top and a chimney of tin cans. George was working 
over this chimney, which gave him so much trouble 
he could not take time to eat his meals, and his father 
did not interrupt him, but looked around in search 
of his little patient, whom he did not recognize at 
the first glance. The soft little white silk dresses 
had been laid aside, and she wore a dark blue seer- 
sucker, which Aunt Lucy had chosen because of its 
strength. Her hair was braided in two tight braids, 
and her cheeks were burnt red by the sun, which had 
also placed four freckles on her sacred little nose. 

She was giggling like any common little girl as 
George’s tin cans kept tumbling over, and as Dr. 
Ross looked at her he thought he could defy even the 
175 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


Rev. Stoner to find any demon about her. Then he 
remembered the Soul Symposium and thought of its 
horror could it now behold the star of its hope, and 
he laughed outright. 

“You have worked a miracle, Lucy,” said he, that 
evening, to his sister-in-law. 

“I have had nothing to do with it,” said she. “The 
day you went back to town George brought five kit- 
tens in from the barn to show her, and she went out 
with him to feed them. After that she followed him 
all around the place, and in a day or two was climb- 
ing into the hay-mow after him, hunting the eggs. 
I have had nothing to do but to keep plenty of fresh 
milk and gingerbread on hand.” 

That night as George’s father tucked him into bed 
he said to him: 

“George, how would you like to go into business 
for yourself?” 

“All right,” said George, with visions of a candy 
store in his mind. 

“Well,” said Dr. Ross, “I think when we go back 
to town I shall have to hire a hall for you and put 
out a sign ‘George Arthur Ross, Divine Healer and 
Outcaster of Devils.’ ” 


176 


THE SEEDS OF DISILLUSION 



THE SEEDS OF DISILLUSION 


D ON’T eat the seeds; they will kill mama’s lit- 
tle girl.” 

Julia carefully pursued and routed from its hiding 
place every seed in her dish of prunes, and laid it 
carefully on her plate. She had been warned so 
often concerning the deadly power of seeds that she 
would as soon have taken a bottle of strychnine as 
eaten a seed. Had she longed for death, the method 
of committing suicide would not have bothered her. 
She simply would have swallowed a seed. 

But Julia did not wish to die. Not that she had 
much idea what death was; she really knew no more 
about it than a grown person does; but she did not 
wish to be hung on the door knob like the baby across 
the street that had died. She had seen it fluttering 
there. 

Neither did Julia wish her father to die, and so 
one evening when there was company for supper, 
and she sat beside him in her high chair, she burst 
forth in a shrill voice of alarm as she saw him put a 
cherry into his mouth: “Don’t eat the seeds, papa! 
Don’t eat the seeds!” 

It seemed to her unreasonable, not to speak of the 
179 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


bad manners of it, that every one at the table should 
laugh. What could be more proper than that a hu- 
mane child should look after her father’s safety, while 
her mother was busy talking to the company? But 
afterwards the course of events explained their con- 
duct. 

One day Samuel brought home from school a 
strange little boy. With much pride he escorted 
him as far as the back porch, where his guest balked 
and resisted all his entreaties to come further. So 
Samuel, much excited over his visitor, left him there 
and strode noisily in, disregarding the notice which 
he himself had printed on the door in blue chalk: 
“No tramps aloud at this door.” 

“Johnny Stewart brought a bucket of lard to 
school,” said he to his mother. “He thought it was 
his dinner, but when he opened it it was lard. It’s 
too far for him to go home, so I told him you would 
give him some dinner.” 

Mrs. Sears went out to the porch, where Johnny 
Stewart at her approach hid behind a post. He was 
a bashful little boy, but he was also a very hungry 
one, and though used to a lardy diet, shrank from 
eating pure lard. 

“Won’t you come in and eat your lunch with Sam- 
uel?” said Mrs. Sears. 

But even the pangs of hunger could not drive 
Johnny Stewart to eat in the presence of this lady 
180 


THE SEEDS OF DISILLUSION 


and the round-eyed little girl staring at him from 
the doorway. So he hung his head and clung to his 
post, and never a word said he. Coaxing could not 
move him, and finally Mrs. Sears called her own 
children in and sent them back with a lunch for their 
guest on the porch. They brought out to him baked 
potatoes, peanut sandwiches and a big red apple, and 
so left him. 

When Samuel and Julia came out from their own 
lunch the food had unsealed the lips of the child of 
silent mystery, and thus he addressed Samuel: 

“Don’t you ever have pie an’ cake?” 

“Yes,” said Samuel; “sometimes when papa’s 
home.” But Julia sought her mother. 

“He wants pie and cake,” she said. 

“What?” 

“The boy on the porch. He asked if we didn’t 
ever have pie and cake.” 

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Sears. 

She was not a student of the child. She did not 
reflect that if she herself had an honored guest, and 
that guest should express a desire for pie and cake, 
she would hasten to set them before him. Such a 
one was Johnny Stewart to Julia. He was as a 
knight who had ridden in from the land of romance, 
and who, being refreshed, should ride back again 
into it. It was a humiliation to her that anything 
should be lacking for his entertainment. 

181 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


She went out slowly, and standing in the doorway, 
shyly regarded Johnny Stewart as he sat on the edge 
of the porch. Her mother called Samuel upstairs 
to question him as to what manner of boy the stranger 
was. He was dirty and ragged, and was certainly 
an ill-mannered child. Evidently he was not a fit 
companion for her son. 

Julia went slowly into the pantry. No one was 
there, but there was a plum pie. She had seen her 
mother making it that morning, but she knew it was 
not intended to be cut until her father came in the 
evening. But a father comes every evening, and per- 
haps a Johnny Stewart will come only once in a life- 
time. So she took a knife from the drawer and cut 
a piece off the pie, and took it dripping red in her two 
little fat hands, and handed it to Johnny Stewart 
without a word; and without a word he took it and 
began to eat it. 

“Don’t eat the seeds,” said Julia. 

Johnny Stewart did not reply, but kept right on 
eating seeds and all. 

“Don’t eat the seeds!” said Julia again, in great 
distress. “If you eat the seeds you will die.” 

“Aw,” said Johnny Stewart, with his mouth full, 
“seeds won’t hurt you.” 

Poor boy! In his ignorance he had committed 
the fatal deed. She would be to blame for his death. 
In terror she went and hid behind the parlor door 
182 






THE SEEDS OF DISILLUSION 


and there she waited, trembling and conscience- 
stricken. 

She heard no sound. If Johnny Stewart was dead 
he had died easy and made no noise. After awhile 
she heard Samuel come down stairs and go out on 
the porch. 

“Come on,” said he. 

The boy was not dead yet. She crept out from the 
hiding place and went softly to the window, and 
there she saw her brother and his guest walking 
along to school together. 

He was an ill-mannered child, for not one word 
of thanks did he give Samuel for his entertainment. 
All he said as they walked along together was this: 

“That little sister of yours is nutty.” 

Could it be, that seeds were not as deadly as her 
mother supposed? Perhaps the boy would die in 
school that afternoon, she thought. But he did not; 
for she saw him go past the house many times after 
that; and afterwards she discovered why he had not 
died. 

There was a tramp came to the kitchen door. He 
evidently read Samuel’s sign, for he shuffled up very 
quietly and knocked. He was the trampiest looking 
tramp you can imagine — red faced, blear-eyed, dirty 
and most ragged. Her mother was away and Aunt 
Sadie, who was staying with Julia, hastened to give 
him something to eat. She was afraid of him and 
185 



THE FINISH 







THE FINISH 


F OR many years an old Irish organ-grinder fre- 
quented the corner of Wabash avenue and 
Eldridge court, Chicago; where the little Catholic 
church shines amid the disrepute of the neighbor- 
hood like a good deed in a naughty world. There 
the old man played over and over again his reper- 
toire, in which an air from “Martha” and “The 
Wearing of the Green” were his stand-bys, and thus 
he managed to live on the generosity of the passers- 
by. Many a good Catholic, going to worship on a 
cold day, was moved to pity by the sight of the old 
man, buffeted by the wind that thrusts from Lake 
Michigan like an icy sword; and often the gaudy 
girls that came from the houses back of the church, 
or the men that went therein, gave their toll to him. 

Dennis was weazened and weather-beaten as to 
his countenance, and hobbling with rheumatism as 
to his limbs, but he still had the soul of the optimist, 
and was trying to save enough money to take him 
to the gold mines of Tonopah and Goldfield. There 
was a man had gone there a year ago, with only eight 
dollars to his name, and now he was a millionaire; 
and did not Dennis Doran stand as good a show as 
191 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 




any other poor man; much better indeed than a man 
who knew nothing of mining? 

One evening he went as usual to a little basement 
cafeteria and was drinking his cup of coffee and eat- 
ing his Hungarian goulash or Irish stew. The cof- 
fee, of many horse power, set him to dreaming of 
the smiles of fortune, from which he was roused by 
the remark of a young man opposite. This person 
had glanced across the table at the old man with 
“Irish” written so plainly on his countenance, and, 
with a wink at the third man, said : 

“That was a horrible thing about Ireland, wasn’t 
it? The whole island swallowed up in a single night 
by an earthquake.” 

“Awful,” said his companion, “it is the worst 
earthquake since that of Lisbon.” 

“You are foolin’,” said the quavering voice of 
Dennis Doran. The first speaker took a newspaper 
from his pocket. 

“You can see for yourself,” said he, “the whole 
island has disappeared.” 

The old man took the paper in his trembling hands 
and stared at the paragraph pointed out to him. It 
was an account of a horse race. Dennis had never 
learned to read — had never before felt the need of 
it, though he had traveled to the far ends of the 
earth. What a waste of time it would have been 
for him, anyway, for he no sooner learned to speak 
192 


THE FINISH 


a little of one language, than he went to some other 
place and had to learn another. Book learning 
would have been but a superfluous thing for him. 

“It may be so,” said he, “it may be so.” 

He raised his eyes to his companions’ faces, which 
swam before him so that they seemed as a great com- 
pany. 

“I suppose there were millions of people per- 
ished,” said one. 

The old man did not answer, but he began slowly 
to shake his head, and slowly the tears came into 
his eyes. 

“Since this has happened,” he said finally, “there 
is nothing more for me in the world.” And he got 
up and went out. 

He turned toward the lake and then went slowly 
along Michigan avenue, carrying his hand-organ, 
which after a while he began to play, not knowing 
what he did. He walked beside the strip of park 
that stretches along the lake. Some urchins, climb- 
ing out on the stiff tails of the lions in front of the 
Art Institute, yelled at him to “give us a change of 
tune,” but he did not hear them. On he went, past 
the mound where the statue of General Logan rides 
a charger and waves in his hand a furled flag that in 
the distance looks like an umbrella that has seen bet- 
ter days. But the old organ-grinder saw nothing 
before him. He was back forty years and in Cork 
193 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


again with Katie and the children; Katie of the 
black eyes and sharp tongue. He was thinking of 
how she had said to him, after he had failed to get 
a start there, and had wearied her with talk of for* 
tunes to be gained in other lands, 

“For the love of God, go, Dennis Doran! I will 
get along better without you. At least I can’t do 
worse.” 

And he had gone. First to India, where a for- 
tune in ivory awaited him; but when he got there 
he learned that Australia was the place to make 
money; soon afterward, fortune was in the gold of 
Transvaal; but when he had pursued it there for a 
while, lo, it had flitted to America, and the year or 
two he had allowed for the making of his fortune 
and the cooling of Katie’s wrath stretched away into 
many years — so many that for a long time he had 
feared to count them. He had put from him the 
thought that little Katie was a baby no more, and 
that Patrick must have grown as tall as his father. 

But he had .intended to go back; God knows he 
had intended to go. But how could he go back to 
face Katie’s scorn of the man who had left her for 
years to pull through alone; only to come back at 
last poorer than when he went away? 

Never had he cherished any other purpose than 
to go back. But without having made some money, 
how could he? Perhaps they were getting along 
194 



How many times had he dreamed those dreams! 

195 























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X- 













































* „ 




































































THE FINISH 


well without him, and like those wanderers of old, 
he feared, 

“All hath suffered change; 

For surely now our household hearths are cold, 

Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange, 

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.” 

Perhaps Tim Sheehan or Pat Melick were pester- 
ing Katie; perhaps she had even taken up with one 
of them; and if he had money how bold this Ulysses 
would have been to go in and cast out the suitors! 

Often for weeks, such fears had haunted him and 
given him a feverish desire to be up and doing, and 
then would he seek pastures new. But again would 
the lotus of time and distance lull him to inaction; 
and the sirens of life are many, and Dennis had a 
weak foolish yearning for sympathy; and there had 
been times when he had seemed to forget. But he 
had never forgotten, he had intended to go back, 
but like the couple in “The Statue and the Bust,” 
he dreamed and dallied his life away. 

His one hope had remained with him in all his 
wanderings — the hope of the one thing that would 
make all things right. Riches that would awe Katie 
into silent admiration, her reproaches unspoken; 
riches that would make his children idolize himj 
that would make Katie’s brothers, — those arrogant 
and sarcastic knaves who had called him a ne’er- 
do-well — that would make them green with envy, 
197 


SILHOUETTE STORIES 


and his own relatives and the neighbors as well. 

How many times had he dreamed those dreams! 
— dreams in which he went back rolling in wealth 
— it is as easy to dream a million as a hundred — 
built a house like a palace for splendor, and there 
fared sumptuously every day, and thence rode forth 
through the streets of Cork in the splendors of a 
barouche and a team of black horses such as were 
never before seen in the place. And beside him was 
Katie, and the children sat on the back seat, and all 
were resplendent in purple and fine linen. 

But now the dream of his life was over. He had 
failed in everything. He knew now that he was 
old and broken, with the fires of youth no longer able 
to be revived in him, and that all his hopes were an 
empty dream. The cord of hope that held him to 
life had suddenly snapped. 

He had always meant to go back, and now Erin 
was wiped from the face of the waters, and his wife 
and children had gone down to death, thinking base 
things of him; not knowing what he had intended to 
accomplish for them. 

He walked on, still grinding at the organ, and the 
tears rolled down his cheeks, but he did not know 
it. On he went, across the railroad tracks and to 
the edge of the water. On he went, out into the lake, 
still playing the strains of “Martha,” until the cold 
waters of Lake Michigan closed over him. 

198 






\'Aj A/.V 































































. 
















